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BY THE SAME AUTHOR 

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E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 
NEW YORK 



FRONT LINES 



BY BOYD CABLE 

author op 
'between the lines," "action front," "grapes of wrath" 




NEW YORK 
E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 

681 FIFTH AVENUE 



jy<s«* 



COPTBIQHT, 1918, 

BY E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 

AU Rights Reserved 



Printed in the United States of America 

APR 121918 

©CI.A492931 



THESE LINES, WRITTEN AT AND TELLING 
ABOUT THE FRONT, ARE DEDICATED— WITH 
THE FERVENT WISH THAT THOSE THERE 
MAY SOON SEE THE LAST OF IT— TO THE 
FRONT, BY 

THE AUTHOR 



FOREWORD 

These tales have been written over a period 
running from the later stages of the Somme 
to the present time. For the book I have two 
ambitions— the first, that to my Service read- 
ers it may bring a few hours of interest and 
entertainment, may prove some sort of a pic- 
ture and a record of what they themselves 
have been through; the second, that it may 
strike and impress and stir those people at 
home who even now clearly require awaken- 
ing to all that war means. 

I know that a great many war workers 
have been, and still are, bearing cheerfully 
and willingly the long strain of war work, 
and I very gladly and thankfully offer my 
testimony to what I have seen of this good 
spirit. But it would be idle to deny, since the 
proofs have been too plain, that many war 
workers are not doing their best and utmost, 

are not playing the game as they might do 
vii 



viii FOREWORD 

and ought to do, and it is to these in particu- 
lar I hope this book may speak. 

Surely by now every worker might appre- 
ciate the fact that whatever good cause they 
may have for "war weariness" they are at 
least infinitely better off than any man in the 
firing line; surely they can understand how 
bitter men here feel when they hear and read 
of all these manifestations of labour " dis- 
content " and "unrest." We know well how 
dependent we are on the efforts of the work- 
ers at home, and there are times when we 
are forced to the belief that some workers also 
know it and trade on it for their own benefit, 
are either woefully ignorant still of what the 
failure of their fullest effort means to us, or, 
worse, are indifferent to the sufferings and 
endurings of their men on active service, are 
unpatriotic, narrow, selfish enough to put the 
screw on the nation for their own advantage. 

I beg each war worker to remember that 
every slackening of their efforts, every re- 
duction of output, every day wasted, every 
stoppage of work, inevitably encourages the 
enemy, prolongs the war, keeps men chained 



FOREWORD ix 

to the misery of the trenches, piles up the 
casualties, continues the loss of life. A 
strike, or the threat of a strike, may win for 
the workers their 12y 2 per cent, increase of 
pay, the "recognition" of some of their offi- 
cials, their improved comfort ; but every such 
"victory" is only gained at the expense of 
the men in the trenches, is paid for in flesh 
and blood in the firing line. 

When men here are suffering as they must 
suffer, are enduring as they do endure with 
good heart and courage, it comes as a pro- 
found shock and a cruel discouragement to 
them to read in the papers, or go home and 
discover, that any people there are ap- 
parently indifferent to their fate, are ready 
to sacrifice them ruthlessly for any trivial 
personal benefit, refuse to share the pinch 
of war, must have compensating advantages 
to level up "the increased cost of living," 
will even bring a vital war industry to a 
standstill — it has been done — as a "protest" 
against the difficulty of obtaining butter or 
margarine and tea. It may be that one grows 
one-sided in ideas after more than three 



x FOREWORD 

years' soldiering, but can yon blame ns if 
we feel contempt for pitiful grumblers and 
complainers who have a good roof overhead, 
a warm room and fire, a dry bed, and no real 
lack of food, if we feel anger against men 
who have all these things and yet go on 
strike, knowing that we must pay the pen- 
alty ? And let me flatly deny the claim which 
some strikers and agitators still make that 
in these upheavals and checks on war indus- 
try they are " fighting for the rights of their 
mates in the trenches.' ' Their "mates in the 
trenches ' ' will be ready and able to, and cer- 
tainly will, fight for their own rights when 
the war is won and they can do so without 
endangering or delaying the winning. 

Meantime can any man be fool enough 
honestly to believe that "mates in the 
trenches ' ' want anything more urgently than 
to win the war and get out of it? If there 
are any such fools let them try to imagine 
the feelings of the "mate" cowering and 
shivering over a scanty handful of wet wood 
or black-smoky dust "coal ration" who hears 
that coal miners at home threaten a strike; 



FOREWORD xi 

of the man crouched in a battered trench 
that is being blasted to bits by German steel 
shells from steel guns, who learns that our 
steel-makers are "out" and if their demands 
were not satisfied would continue to strike 
indefinitely and hold up the making of the 
guns and shells which alone can protect us ; of 
the man who is being bombed from the air 
night after night in his billets and reads that 
50,000 aircraft workers are on strike, and 
that the Front will be poorer as a result by 
hundreds of the aircraft which might bomb 
the enemy 'dromes out of action and stop 
their raiding; the dismay of the man about 
to go on a long deferred and eagerly waited 
leave when he is told that all leaves may have 
to be stopped because a threatened strike of 
"foot-plate" workers may strand him at his 
debarkation port. Will it soothe or satisfy a 
man in any of these cases to be told the 
strikes are really fights for his rights, espe- 
cially when you remember he knows that as 
a result of the strike he may be too dead to 
have any rights to be fought for? 

The best I can wish for this book is that 



xii FOREWORD 

it may do even one little bit to make plain 
with what cheerfulness — cheerfulness and 
even at times almost incredible humour — the 
Front is sticking it out, with what complete 
confidence in final victory this year's fight is 
being begun; and may make yet more plain 
the need for every man and woman at home 
to give their last ounce of energy to help win 
the war speedily and conclusively. 

Boyd Cable. 

On the Western Feont, 
January 1th, 1918. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. Trench-made Art 1 

II. The Suicide Club 21 

III. In the Wood 44 

IV. The Diving Tank 62 

V. In the Mist 74 

VI. Seeing Red 99 

VII. An Air Barrage 117 

VIII. Nightmare 137 

IX. The Gilded Staff . . . .'"". 156 

X. A Raid 172 

XI. A Roaring Trade 183 

XII. Home 205 

XIII. Bring up the Guns 227 

XIV. Our Battery's Prisoner . . . 246 
XV. Our Turn 262 

XVI. According to Plan 277 

XVII. Down in Hunland 297 

XVIII. The Final Objective .... 318 

XIX. Artillery Preparation .... 327 

XX. Stretcher-bearers 336 

XXI. The Conquerors 345 



FRONT LINES 



TRENCH-MADE AET 

By the very nature of their job the R.A.M.C. 
men in the Field Ambulances have at inter- 
vals a good deal of spare time on their hands. 
The personnel has to be kept at a strength 
which will allow of the smooth and rapid 
handling of the pouring stream of casualties 
which floods back from the firing line when 
a big action is on; and when a period of in- 
activity comes in front the stream drops to a 
trickle that doesn't give the field ambulances 
"enough work to keep themselves warm." 

It was in one of these slack periods that 
Corporal Richard, of the Oughth London 
Field Ambulance, resumed the pleasurable 
occupation of his civilian days, to his own 
great satisfaction and the enormous interest 



2 FRONT LINES 

of his comrades. Richard in pre-war days 
had been a sculptor, and the chance discov- 
ery near the ambulance camp of a stream 
where a very fair substitute for modelling 
clay could be had led him to experiments and 
a series of portrait modellings. He had no 
lack of models. Every other man in his squad 
was most willing to be "took," and would sit 
with most praiseworthy patience for as long 
as required, and for a time Richard revelled 
in the luxury of unlimited (and free-of-cost) 
models and in turning out portraits and cari- 
catures in clay. He worked with such speed, 
apparent ease, and complete success that be- 
fore long he had half the men endeavouring 
to imitate his artistic activities. 

Then Richard attempted more serious 
work, and in the course of time turned out a 
little figure study over which the more edu- 
cated and artistic of his friends waxed most 
enthusiastic, and which he himself, consider- 
ing it carefully and critically, admitted to be 
"not bad." On the other hand, it is true that 
many members of the company regarded the 
masterpiece with apathy, and in some cases 



TRENCH-MADE ART 3 

almost with disapproval. " Seems a pity," 
said one critic, ' ' that the corp 'ril should 'ave 
wasted all this time over the one job. Spent 
every minute of 'is spare time, 'e 'as, fiddlin' 
an' touchin' up at it; could 'ave done a dozen 
o' them picturs o' us chaps in the time. An', 
now it is done, 'tain't quarter sich a good 
joke as that one o' the sergeant-major wi' the 
bottle nose. Fair scream, that was." 

But in due time the corporal went home 
on leave, and took his study along with him. 
Later it gained a place in an exhibition of 
" Trench-made Art" in London, many news- 
paper paragraphs, and finally a photo in a 
picture paper and a note stating who the 
work was by and the conditions under which 
it was performed. 

A good score of the picture papers arrived 
at the Oughth London from friends at home 
to men in the unit. That did it. There was 
an immediate boom in Art in the Oughth Lon- 
don, and sculpture became the popular spare- 
time hobby of the unit. This was all, as I 
have said, at a period when spare time was 
plentiful. The unit was billeted in a village 



4 FRONT LINES 

well behind the firing-line in a peacefully 
sylvan locality. It was early summer, so that 
the light lasted long in the evenings, and gave 
plenty of opportunity to the sculptors to pur- 
sue their Art after the day's duties were 
done. 

As a consequence the output of sculpture 
would have done credit — in quantity if not, 
perhaps, in quality — to a popular atelier in 
full swing. The more enterprising attempted 
to follow the corporal's path in portrait and 
caricature, and it must be confessed were a 
good deal more successful in the latter 
branch. The portraits usually required an 
explanatory inscription, and although the 
caricatures required the same in most cases, 
they only had to be ugly enough, to show a 
long enough nose, or a big enough mouth, 
and to be labelled with the name of some fair 
butt or sufficiently unpopular noncom. to se- 
cure a most satisfying and flattering meed 
of praise. 

Less ambitious spirits contented themselves 
with simpler and more easily recognisable 
subjects. The cross or crucifix which, as a 



TRENCH-MADE ART 5 

rule, marks the cross or forked roads in this 
part of France had from the first caught the 
attention and interest of the Londoners, and 
now, in the new flush of Art, provided imme- 
diate inspiration. Almost every man in the 
new school of sculpture graduated through a 
course of plain crosses to more fancy ones, 
and higher up the scale to crucifixes. 

But in point of popularity even the cross 
sank to second place when Private Jimmy 
Copple, with an originality that amounted 
almost to genius, turned out a miniature 
model coffin. The coffin, as a work of art, had 
points that made it an unrivalled favourite. 
It was so obviously and unmistakably a coffin 
that it required no single word of explanation 
or description ; it was simple enough in form 
to be within the scope of the veriest beginner ; 
it lent itself to embellishment and the finer 
shades of reproduction in nails and tassels 
and name-plate ; and permitted, without evi- 
dence of undue " swank" on the part of the 
artist, of his signature being appended in the 
natural and fitting place on the name-plate. 

There was a boom in model coffins of all 



6 FRONT LINES 

sizes, and a constantly flickering or raging 
discussion on details of tassels, cords, han- 
dles, and other funereal ornaments. Private 
Copple again displayed his originality of 
thought by blacking a specially fine specimen 
of his handiwork with boot polish, with nails 
and name-plate (duly inscribed with his own 
name and regimental number) picked out in 
the white clay. He was so pleased with this 
that he posted it home, and, on receiving 
warm words of praise from his mother in 
Mile End, and the information that the coffin 
was installed for ever as a household orna- 
ment and an object of interest and admira- 
tion to all neighbours, a steady export trade 
in clay coffins was established from the 
Oughth London to friends and relatives at 
home. 

The Art School was still flourishing when 
the unit was moved up from its peaceful and 
prolonged rest to take a turn up behind the 
firing-line. The removal from their clay sup- 
ply might have closed down the artistic ac- 
tivities, but, fortunately, the Oughth had 
hardly settled in to their new quarters when 



TRENCH-MADE ART 7 

it was found that the whole ground was one 
vast bed of chalk, chalk which was easily ob- 
tainable in any shaped and sized lumps and 
which proved most delightfully easy to 
manipulate with a jack or pen-knife. The 
new modelling material, in fact, gave a fillip 
of novelty to the art, and the coffins and 
crosses proved, when completed, to have a 
most desirable quality of solidity and of last- 
ing and retaining their shape and form far 
better than the similar objects in clay. 

Better still, the chalk could be carried about 
on the person as no clay could, and worked 
at anywhere in odd moments. Bulging side- 
pockets became a marked feature of inspec- 
tion parades, until one day when the CO. 
went round, and noticing a craggy projection 
under the pocket of Private Copple, de- 
manded to know what the private was load- 
ing himself with, and told him abruptly to 
show the contents of his pocket. On Copple 
producing with difficulty a lump of partially 
carved chalk, the CO. stared at it and then 
at the sheepish face of the private in blank 



8 FRONT LINES 

amazement. * 'What's this?" he demanded. 
"What is it?" 

"It — it's a elephant, sir," said Copple. 

"An elephant," said the CO. dazedly. 
"An elephant?" 

"Yessir — leastways, it will be a elephant 
when it's finished," said Copple bashfully. 

"Elephant — will be " spluttered the 

CO., turning to the officer who accompanied 
him. "Is the man mad?" 

"I think, sir," said the junior, "he is try- 
ing to carve an elephant out of a lump of 
chalk." 

"That's it, sir," said Copple, and with a 
dignified touch of resentment at the "try- 
ing," "I am carving out a elephant." 

The CO. turned over the block of chalk 
with four rudimentary legs beginning to 
sprout from it, and then handed it back. 
"Take it away," he said. "Fall out, and 
take the thing away. And when you come 
on parade next time leave — ah — your ele- 
phants in your billet. ' ' 

Copple fell out, and the inspection pro- 
ceeded. But now the eye of the CO. went 



TRENCH-MADE ART 9 

straight to each man's pocket, and further 
lumps of chalk of various sizes were pro- 
duced one by one. ' ' Another elephant 1 ' ' said 
the CO. to the first one. "No, sir," said the 
sculptor. "It's a coffin." "A co — coffin," 
said the CO. faintly, and, turning to the offi- 
cer, "A coffin is what he said, eh?" The 
officer, who knew a good deal of the existing 
craze, had difficulty in keeping a straight 
face. "Yes, sir," he said chokily, "a coffin." 
The CO. looked hard at the coffin and at its 
creator, and handed it back. "And you," he 
said to the next man, tapping with his cane a 
nobbly pocket. "Mine's a coffin, too, sir," 
and out came another coffin. 

The CO. stepped back a pace, and let his 
eye rove down the line. The next man shiv- 
ered as the eye fell on him, as well he might, 
because he carried in his pocket a work de- 
signed to represent the head of the CO. — a 
head of which, by the way, salient features 
lent themselves readily to caricature. None 
of these features had been overlooked by the 
artist, and the identity of the portrait had 
been further established by the eye-glass 



10 FRONT LINES 

which it wore, and by the exaggerated badges 
of rank on the shoulder. Up to the inspec- 
tion and the horrible prospect that the cari- 
cature would be confronted by its original, 
the artist had been delighted with the praise 
bestowed by the critics on the " likeness.' ' 
Now, with the eye of the CO. roaming over 
his shrinking person and protruding pocket, 
he cursed despairingly his own skill. 

"I think," said the CO. slowly, "the pa- 
rade had better dismiss, and when they have 
unburdened themselves of their — ah — ele- 
phants and — ah — coffins — ah — fall in again 
for inspection. ' ' 

The portrait sculptor nearly precipitated 
calamity by his eager move to dismiss with- 
out waiting for the word of command. And 
after this incident sculpings were left out of 
pockets at parade times, and the caricaturist 
forswore any attempts on subjects higher 
than an N.CO. 

The elephant which Private Copple had 
produced was another upward step in his art. 
He had tried animal after animal with faint 
success. The features of even such well- 



TRENCH-MADE ART 11 

known animals as cats and cows had a baf- 
fling way of fading to such nebulous outlines 
in his memory as to be utterly unrecognisable 
when transferred to stone or chalk. A horse, 
although models in plenty were around, 
proved to be a more intricate subject than 
might be imagined, and there were trying 
difficulties about the proper dimensions and 
proportions of head, neck, and body. But an 
elephant had a beautiful simplicity of out- 
line, a solidity of figure that was excellently 
adapted for modelling, and a recognisability 
that was proof against the carping doubts 
and scorn of critics and rival artists. After 
all, an animal with four legs, a trunk, and a 
tail is, and must be, an elephant. But there 
was one great difficulty about the elephant — 
his tail was a most extraordinarily difficult 
thing to produce whole and complete in brit- 
tle chalk, and there was a distressing casualty 
list of almost-finished elephants from this 
weakness. 

At first Private Copple made the tail the 
last finishing touch to his work, but when ele- 
phant after elephant had to be scrapped be- 



12 FRONT LINES 

cause the tail broke off in the final carving, 
he reversed the process, began his work on 
the tail and trunk — another irritatingly 
breakable part of an elephant's anatomy — 
and if these were completed successfully, 
went on to legs, head, etc. If the trunk or 
tail broke, he threw away the block and 
started on a fresh one. He finally improved 
on this and further reduced the wastage and 
percentage of loss by beginning his elephant 
with duplicate ends, with a trunk, that is, at 
head and stern. If one trunk broke off he 
turned the remaining portion satisfactorily 
enough into a tail; if neither broke and the 
body and legs were completed without acci- 
dent, he simply whittled one of the trunks 
down into a tail and rounded off the head at 
that end into a haunch. 

But now such humour as may be in this 
story must give way for the moment to the 
tragedy of red war — as humour so often has 
to do at the front. 

Copple was just in the middle of a specially 
promising elephant when orders came to 
move. He packed the elephant carefully in 



TRENCH-MADE ART 13 

a handkerchief and his pocket and took it 
with him back to the training area where for 
a time the Oughth London went through a 
careful instruction and rehearsing in the part 
they were to play in the next move of the 
''Show" then running. He continued to 
work on his elephant in such spare time as 
he had, and was so very pleased with it that 
he clung to it when they went on the march 
again, although pocket space was precious 
and ill to spare, and the elephant took up one 
complete side pocket to itself. 

Arrived at their appointed place in the 
show, Copple continued to carry his elephant, 
but had little time to work on it because he 
was busy every moment of the day and many 
hours of the night on his hard and risky 
duties. The casualties came back to the Aid 
Post in a steady stream that swelled at times 
to an almost overwhelming rush, and every 
man of the Field Ambulance was kept going 
at his hardest. The Aid Post was established 
in a partly wrecked German gun emplacement 
built of concrete, and because all the ground 
about them was too ploughed up and cratered 



14 FRONT LINES 

with shell-fire to allow a motor ambulance to 
approach it, the wounded had to be helped 
or carried back to the nearest point to which 
the hard-working engineers had carried the 
new road, and there were placed on the mo- 
tors. 

Private Copple was busy one morning help- 
ing to carry back some of the casualties. A 
hot ''strafe" was on, the way back led 
through lines and clumped batches of bat- 
teries all in hot action, the roar of gun-fire 
rose long and unbroken and deafeningly, and 
every now and then through the roar of their 
reports and the diminishing wails of their 
departing shells there came the rising shriek 
and rush of a German shell, the crump and 
crash of its burst, the whistle and hum of fly- 
ing splinters. Private Copple and the rest 
of the R.A.M.C. men didn't like it any more 
than the casualties, who appeared to dread 
much more, now that they were wounded, the 
chance of being hit again, chiefly because it 
would be such "rotten luck" to get killed 
now that they had done their share, got their 
"Blighty," and with decent luck were soon 



TRENCH-MADE ART 15 

to be out of it all, and safely and comfortably- 
back in hospital and home. 

But, although many times the wounded 
asked to be laid down in a shell-hole, or al- 
lowed to take cover for a moment at the warn- 
ing shriek of an approaching shell, the ambu- 
lance men only gave way to them when, from 
the noise, they judged the shell was going to 
fall very perilously close. If they had 
stopped for every shell the work would have 
taken too long, and the Aid Post was too 
cram-full, and too many fresh cases were 
pouring in, to allow of any delay on the mere 
account of danger. So there were during the 
day a good many casualties amongst the am- 
bulance men, and so at the end Private Cop- 
pie was caught. He had hesitated a moment 
too long in dropping himself into the cover 
of the shell crater where he had just lowered 
the " walking wounded" he was supporting 
back. The shell whirled down in a crescendo 
of howling, roaring noise, and, just as Copple 
flung himself down, burst with an earth- 
shaking crash a score or so of yards away. 
Copple felt a tremendous blow on his side. 



16 FRONT LINES 

They had ripped most of the clothes off him 
and were busy with first field dressings on 
his wounds when he recovered enough to take 
any interest in what was going on. The 
dressers were in a hurry because more shells 
were falling near ; there was one vacant place 
in a motor ambulance, and its driver was in 
haste to be off and out of it. 

''You're all right," said one of the men, 
in answer to Copple's faint inquiry. "All 
light wounds. Lord knows what you were 
carrying a lump of stone about in your pocket 
for, but it saved you this trip. Splinter hit 
it, and smashed it, and most of the wounds 
are from bits of the stone — luckily for you, 
because if it hadn't been there a chunk of 
Boche iron would just about have gone 
through you." 

' ' Stone ? ' ' said Copple faintly. ' ' Strewth ! 
That was my blessed elephant in my bloomin' 
pocket." 

"Elephant?" said the orderly. "In your 
pocket? An' did it have pink stripes an' a 
purple tail? Well, never mind about ele- 
phants now. You can explain 'em to the 



TRENCH-MADE ART 19 

"That's true," said Copple. "Especially 
up Wipers way." 

"So, if making elephants gives some peo- 
ple the greatest possible pleasure in life, why 
not let them make elephants? I'm an artist 
of sorts myself, or was trying to be before 
the war, so I speak feelingly for a brother 
elephant-maker, Copple. ' ' 

"Artist, was you?" said Copple, with 
great interest. "That must be a jolly sorter 
job." 

"It is, Copple — or was," said the Sister, 
finishing the-tucking-up. "Much jollier than 
a starched-smooth uniform and life — and lots 
in it." And she sighed and made a little 
grimace at the stained bandages she picked 
up. "But if you and thousands of other 
men give up your particular arts and go out 
to have your short lives cut shorter, the least 
I can do is to give up mine to try to make 
them longer." 

Copple didn't quite follow all this. "I 
wish I'd a bit o' chalk stone, Sister," he said; 
"I'd teach you how to do a elephant with the 
two trunks." 



20 FRONT LINES 

"And how if a trunk breaks off one's ele- 
phant — or life, one can always try to trim it 
down to quite a useful tail," said the Sister, 
smiling at him as she turned to go. "You've 
already taught me something of that, Copple 
— you and the rest there in the trenches — 
better than you know." 



n 

THE SUICIDE CLUB 

The Royal Jocks (Oughth Battalion) had 
suffered heavily in the fighting on the Somme, 
and after they had been withdrawn from ac- 
tion to another and quieter part of the line, 
all ranks heard with satisfaction that they 
were to be made up to full strength by a big 
draft from Home. There were the usual 
wonderings and misgivings as to what sort 
of a crowd the draft would be, and whether 
they would be at all within the limits of possi- 
bility of licking into something resembling 
the shape that Royal Jocks ought to be. 

"Expect we'll 'ave a tidy job to teach 'em 
wot's wot," said Private "Shirty" Low, 
"but we must just pass along all the fatigues 
they can 'andle, and teach 'em the best we 
can. ' ' 

"Let's hope," said his companion, "that 

they get an advance o ' pay to bring with 'em. 

21 



22 FRONT LINES 

We'll be goin' back to billets soon, and we'll 
be able to introduce 'em proper to the 
estaminets. ' ' 

"You boys '11 have to treat 'em easy to 
begin with," said a corporal. "Don't go 
breakin' their hearts for a start. They'll be 
pretty sick an' home-sick for a bit, and you 
don't want to act rough before they begin 
to feel their feet." 

This was felt to be reasonable, and there 
was a very unanimous opinion that the best 
way of treating the new arrivals was on the 
lines of the suggestion about introducing 
them carefully and fully to the ways of the 
country, with particular attention to the cus- 
toms of the estaminets. 

"And never forget," said the Corporal in 
conclusion, "that, good or bad, they're Royal 
Jocks after all; and it will be up to you fel- 
lows to see that they don't get put on by any 
other crush, and to give 'em a help out if they 
tumble into any little trouble." 

The sentiments of the battalion being 
fairly well summed up by this typical con- 
versation, it will be understood with what 



THE SUICIDE CLUB 23 

mixed feelings it was discovered on the ac- 
tual arrival of the draft that they, the draft, 
were not in the slightest degree disposed to 
be treated as new hands, declined utterly to 
be in any way fathered, declined still more 
emphatically to handle more than their fair 
share of fatigues, and most emphatically of 
all to depend upon the good offices of the old 
soldiers for their introduction to the ways of 
the estaminets. The draft, which was far 
too strong in numbers to be simply absorbed 
and submerged in the usual way of drafts, 
showed an inclination to hang together for 
the first few days, and, as the Battalion soon 
began somewhat dazedly to realise, actually 
to look down upon the old soldiers and to 
treat them with a tinge of condescension. 

The open avowal of this feeling came one 
night in the largest and most popular esta- 
minet in the village to which the Battalion 
had been withdrawn "on rest." 

"Shirty" and some cronies were sitting at 
a stone-topped table with glasses and a jug 
of watery beer in front of them. The room 
was fairly full and there were about as many 



24 FRONT LINES 

of the draft present as there were of the old 
lot, and practically all the draft were gath- 
ered in little groups by themselves and were 
drinking together. Close to Shirty 's table 
was another with half a dozen of the draft 
seated about it, and Shirty and his friends 
noticed with some envy the liberal amount of 
beer they allowed themselves. One of them 
spoke to the girl who was moving about 
amongst the tables with a tray full of jugs. 
"Here, miss, anither jug o' beer, please," 
and held out the empty jug. Shirty saw his 
opportunity, and with an ingratiating smile 
leaned across and spoke to the girl. "Don- 
nay them encore der bee-are," he said, and 
then, turning to the other men, "She don't 
understand much English, y'see. But jus' 
ask me to pass 'er the word if you wants 
anything. ' ' 

A big-framed lad thanked him civilly, but 
Shirty fancied he saw a nicker of a smile pass 
round the group. He turned back and spoke 
to the girl again as she halted at their table 
and picked up the empty jug. "Encore si 
voo play," he said. "Eh les messieurs la 



THE SUICIDE CLUB 25 

ba " jerking a thumb back at the other 

table, but quite unostentatiously, so that the 
other group might not see, "la ba, voo com- 
pree, payay voo toot la bee-are. " He winked 
slyly at his fellows and waited developments 
complacently, while all smoked their cig- 
arettes gravely and nonchalantly. 

The girl brought the two jugs of beer pres- 
ently and put one on each table. "Com- 
bien?" said one of the draft who had not 
spoken before — a perky little man with a 
sharp black moustache. He hesitated a mo- 
ment when the girl told him how much, and 
then spoke rapidly in fluent French. Shirty 
at his table listened uneasily to the conversa- 
tion that followed, and made a show of great 
indifference in filling up the glasses. The 
little man turned to him. "There's some 
mistake here, m' lad," he said. "The girl 
says you ordered your beer and said we'd 
pay for it. ' ' 

Shirty endeavoured to retrieve the lost 
position. "Well, that's good of you," he 
said pleasantly. "An' we don't mind if we 
do 'ave a drink wi' you." 



26 FRONT LINES 

The big man turned round. "Drink wi's 
when ye 're asked," he said calmly. ''But 
that's no ' yet," and he turned back to his own 
table. "Tell her they'll pay their ain, Wat- 
tie." Wattie told her, and Shirty 's table 
with some difficulty raised enough to cover 
the cost of the beer. Shirty felt that he had 
to impress these new men with a true sense 
of their position. "My mistake," he said to 
his companions, but loudly enough for all to 
hear. "But I might 'ave twigged these raw 
rookies wouldn't 'ave knowed it was a reg'lar 
custom in the Army for them to stand a drink 
to the old hands to pay their footing. An' 
most likely they haven't the price o' a drink 
on them, anyway." 

"Lauchie," said the big man at the other 
table, "have ye change o' a ten-franc note? 
No. Wattie, maybe ye '11 ask the lassie to 
change it, an' tell her to bring anither beer. 
This is awfu' swipes o' stuff t' be drinkin'. 
It's nae wonder the men that's been oot here 
a whilie has droppit awa' to such shauchlin', 
knock-kneed, weak-like imitations of putty 
men." 



THE SUICIDE CLUB 27 

This was too much. Shirty pushed back 
his chair and rose abruptly. "If you're 
speakin' about the men o' this battalion," he 
began fiercely, when a corporal broke in, 
" That '11 do. No rough-housin' here. We 
don't want the estaminets put out o' bounds." 
He turned to the other table. " And you keep 
a civil tongue between your teeth," he said, 
"or you'll have to be taught better manners, 
young fella me lad." 

"Ay," said the big man easily, "I'll be 
glad enough t' be learned from them that 
can learn me. An' aifter the cafe closes will 
be a good enough time for a first lesson, if 
there's anybody minded for't," and he 
glanced at Shirty. 

"Tak him ootside an' gie him a deb on the 
snoot, Rabbie," said another of the draft, 
nodding openly at the enraged Shirty. 

"Ay, ay, "Wullie," said Rabbie gently. 
"But we'll just bide till the Corporal's no 
about. We'll no be gettin' his stripes into 
trouble. ' ' 

All this was bad enough, but worse was to 
follow. It was just before closing-time that 



28 FRONT LINES 

a Gunner came in and discovered a friend 
amongst the many sitting at Rabbie's table. 
He accepted the pressing invitation to a 
drink, and had several in quick succession in 
an endeavour to make an abundant capacity 
compensate for the inadequate time. 

"An' how are you gettin' on?" he asked 
as they all stood to go. "Shaken down wi' 
your new chums all right ?" 

And the whole room, new hands and old 
alike, heard Rabbie's slow, clear answer: 

"We're thinkin' they're an awfu' saft 
kneel-an '-pray kind o' push. But noo we've 
jined them we'll sune learn them to be a bat- 
talyun. I wish we'd a few more o' the real 
stuff from the depot wi's, but Lauchie here's 
the lad tae learn them, and we '11 maybe mak 
a battalyun o' them yet." 

The "learning" began that night after the 
estaminets closed, and there was a liberal 
allowance of black eyes and swollen features 
on parade next morning. It transpired that 
boxing had been rather a feature back at the 
depot, and the new men fully held their own 
in the "learning" episodes. But out of the 



THE SUICIDE CLUB 29 

encounters grew a mutual respect, and be- 
fore long the old and the new had mixed, 
and were a battalion instead of " the battalion 
and the draft. ' ' 

Only ''Shirty" of the whole lot retained 
any animus against the new, and perhaps 
even with him it is hardly fair to say it was 
against the one-time draft, because actually 
it was against one or two members of it. He 
had never quite forgiven nor forgotten the 
taking-down he had had from Rabbie Mac- 
gregor and Lauchie McLauchlan, and con- 
tinued openly or veiledly hostile to them. 

Thrice he had fought Rabbie, losing once 
to him — that was the first time after the es- 
taminet episode — fighting once to an unde- 
cided finish (which was when the picket broke 
in and arrested both), and once with the 
gloves on at a Battalion Sports, when he had 
been declared the winner on points — a de- 
cision which Rabbie secretly refused to ac- 
cept, and his friend Lauchie agreed would 
have been reversed if the fight had been al- 
lowed to go to a finish. 

Shirty was in the bombing section, or 



30 FRONT LINES 

"Suicide Club," as it was called, and both 
Rabbie and Lauchie joined the same section, 
and painfully but very thoroughly acquired 
the art of hurling Mills' grenades at seen or 
unseen targets from above ground or out of 
deep and narrow and movement-cramping 
trenches. 

And after a winter and spring of strenu- 
ous training, the battalion came at last to 
move up and take a part in the new offensive 
of 1917. This attack had several features 
about it that pleased and surprised even the 
veterans of the Somme. For one thing, the 
artillery fire on our side had a weight and a 
precision far beyond anything they had ex- 
perienced, and the attack over the open of 
No Man's Land was successfully made with 
a low cost in casualties which simply amazed 
them all. 

Rabbie openly scoffed at the nickname of 
"Suicide Club" for the Bombing Section. 
They had lost a couple of men wounded in 
the first attack, and had spent a merry morn- 
ing frightening Boche prisoners out of their 



THE SUICIDE CLUB 31 

dug-outs, or in obstinate cases flinging Mills' 
grenades down the stairways. 

They had waited to help stand off the 
counter-attack the first night, but never 
needed to raise their heads or fling a bomb 
over the edge of the broken parapet, because 
the counter-attack was wiped out by artil- 
lery and rifle fire long before it came within 
bombing distance. 

1 'You an' yer Suicide Club!" said Rabbie 
contemptuously to Shirty after this attack 
had been beaten off. "It's no even what the 
insurance folks would ca' a hazardous occu- 
pation." 

"Wait a bit," said Shirty. "We all knows 
you're a bloomin' Scots-wha-hae hero, but 
you 'aven't bin in it proper yet. Wait till 
you 'ave, an' then talk." 

The Bombing Section went into it 
"proper" next day, when the battalion made 
a little forward move that cost them more 
casualties to take a trench and a hundred 
yards of ground than the mile advance of the 
previous day. 

And when they had got the battered trench, 



32 FRONT LINES 

the bombers were sent to clear a communica- 
tion trench leading out of it and held by the 
Germans. This trench was more or less 
broken down, with fallen sides or tumbled 
heaps of earth and gaping- shell craters every 
here and there along its length. The Ger- 
mans contested it stoutly, and the bombers 
had to keep below the level of the ground and 
strictly to the trench, because above-ground 
was being swept by a hurricane of rifle and 
machine-gun fire from both sides. Length by 
length of the zig-zag trench they pushed their 
way, their grenades curving up and ahead of 
them, the German "potato-masher" grenades 
whirling over and down in on them, explod- 
ing with a prodigious noise and smoke but 
comparatively little damage, and yet cutting 
down the attackers one by one 

Rabbie, Lauchie, and Shirty were all in the 
trench together, and were still on their feet 
when they came to the point where the com- 
munication trench ran into another, a sup- 
port trench presumably, running across it. 
At this point they were supposed to hold on 
and consolidate. All had gone well accord- 



TRENCH-MADE ART 17 

Blighty M.O. 1 Here, up you get." And he 
helped Copple to the ambulance. 

Later on, the humour of the situation 
struck Private Copple. He worked up a 
prime witticism which he afterwards played 
off on the Sister who was dressing his 
wounds in a London hospital. 

"D'you know," he said, chuckling, "I'm 
the only man in this war that's been wounded 
by a elephant?" 

The Sister stayed her bandaging, and 
looked at him curiously. "Wounded by a 
elephant," repeated Copple cheerfully. 
"Funny to think it's mebbe a bit of 'is trunk 
made the 'ole in my thigh, an' I got 'is 'ead 
and 'is 'ind leg in my ribs." 

"You mustn't talk nonsense, you know," 
said the Sister hesitatingly. Certainly, Cop- 
ple had shown no signs of shell-shock or un- 
balanced mind before, but 

"We used to carve things out o' chalk 
stone in my lot," went on Copple, and ex- 
plained how the shell splinter had been 
stopped by the elephant in his pocket. The 

1 M. O. Medical Officer 



18 FRONT LINES 

Sister was immensely interested and a good 
deal amused, and laughed — rather immoder- 
ately and in the wrong place, as Copple 
thought when he described his coffin master- 
piece with the name-plate bearing his own 
name, and the dodge of starting on the ele- 
phant with a trunk at each end. 

"Well, I've heard a lot of queer things 
about the front, Copple,' ' she said, busying 
herself on the last bandage. "But I didn't 
know they went in for sculpture. ' Ars longa, 
vitae brevis.' That's a saying in Latin, and 
it means exactly, 'Art is long, life is short.' 
You'd understand it better if I put it an- 
other way. It means that it takes a long, 
long time to make a perfect elephant " 

"It does," said Copple. "But if you be- 
gins 'im like I told you, with a trunk each 
end " 

"There, that'll do," said the Sister, pin- 
ning the last bandage. "Now lie down and 
I'll make you comfortable. A long time to 
make a perfect elephant; and life is very 
short " 



THE SUICIDE CLUB 33 

ing to programme with Rabbie and bis com- 
panions, and tbey turned into tbe support 
trench, cleared a couple of bays to either side 
of the communication way, pulled down sand- 
bags, and piled earth to make a ''block" on 
either side, and settled down to hold their 
position and to await orders. 

They were not left in peaceful possession 
for long. A vigorous attack was delivered, 
first at one barricade and then on the other, 
and both were beaten off with some difficulty 
and a number of casualties. The bombers 
had been reinforced several times to make up 
their reduced numbers, but no further rein- 
forcements had come to them for some time, 
and now there were only half a dozen of them 
and one officer left. The officer sent back a 
lightly wounded man to say they held their 
point, but wanted support. The message, as 
they found afterwards, never got through, be- 
cause the messenger was killed on the way by 
a shell splinter. 

Another heavy and determined attack of 
bombers came soon after. For five minutes 
the Germans showered over their grenades, 



34 FRONT LINES 

and the short section of trench held hy the 
little party of Royal Jocks was shaken to 
pieces by the force of the explosions, the 
sandbag ''blocks" almost destroyed, several 
more men hit, and the officer killed. The 
Jocks returned the shower of bombs with 
plentiful Mills' grenades, but they were 
forced back, and almost the last thing the offi- 
cer did before he was killed was to retire the 
remnants of the party to the communication 
trench entrance, build a fresh block, and pre- 
pare to hold on there. There were only four 
men left, and all were more or less lightly 
wounded with splinters from the German 
grenades. Just before another attack came 
they were reinforced by two bayonet men, 
and one bomber with buckets of Mills '. 

"We're all that's left o' C Company's 
bombers," said one of them. "We were sent 
up to reinforce, but they're shellin' the 
trench back there, an' the others was 
knocked out." 

Another savage attack followed, and was 
beaten off with difficulty and the loss of an- 
other couple of men. Since there was no 



THE SUICIDE CLUB 35 

officer and no N.C.O. there, Shirty, as the 
oldest soldier, took charge. 

"This isn't good enough,' ' he shouted as 
another shower of grenades began to pitch 
over and burst with rending explosions in 
and about the trench. "Why don't they rein- 
force. I'm goin' to retire if they don't send 
supports soon." 

Now, as a matter of fact, the officer bring- 
ing up the last supports had received orders 
to retire the party if they were hard pressed, 
because the attacks up the other communica- 
tion trenches had failed to clear a way, and 
this one party was in danger of being over- 
whelmed. But since the little party knew 
nothing of these orders they were reluctant 
to retire, and unfortunately there was little 
prospect of the supports they expected com- 
ing. 

Their grenades were running short, too, 
and that decided the point for them. Shirty 
Low and Rabbie were crouched close up 
against their barricade, and Lauchie took 
what cover he could get behind the heaped 
debris of the broken-down trench wall close 



36 FRONT LINES 

at Rabbie's side. He was squatted in a little 
niche of the wall and high enough up to allow 
him to lift his head and peep over the para- 
pet. He ducked his head as several grenades 
spun over, lifted it, and peered out again. 

' ' Here they come, ' ' he shouted. ' ' Lat them 
hae't. Rabbie, pass me up some o' they 
bombs. ' ' 

"Wull I hell," retorted Rabbie, rapidly 
pulling the pins out, and tossing his grenades 
over. "Get yer bombs yersel'." 

"One of you two must go back and get 
some Mills'," shouted Shirty. "We'll 'ave to 
duck back, but we'll need supplies to stand 
'em off with. Go on now, one o' you. Look 
nippy. We've 'ardly any left." 

' ' Go on, Lauchie, ' ' said Rabbie. " I 've half 
a dizen left, an' you've nane." 

"I will no," said Lauchie indignantly. 
"Gang yersel'. I'm the senior o' us twa, an' 
I'm tellin' ye." 

"You ma senior," shouted Rab indig- 
nantly. "Yer no ma senior. I was sojerin' 
lang afore ever ye jined up." 



THE SUICIDE CLUB 37 

" Havers, man, Ye've hardly been off the 
square five meenutes." 

Shirty broke in angrily. "Will you shut 
yer heads, and get back, one o' you? We'll 
be done in if they rush us again." 

"See here, Rabbie," said Lauchie, "I'll 
prove yer no ma senior, and then mebbe ye '11 
dae what yer telled. Here's ma paybook, 
wi' date o' enlistment. Let's see yours." 

And he was actually proceeding to fumble 
for his paybook, and Eabbie eagerly doing 
the same, when Shirty again intervened, curs- 
ing savagely, and ordering Rabbie back. 

"I'm his senior, Shirty, an' he should go," 
said Rabbie. "Lat him show you his book." 

"Book be blistered," yelled Shirty. "Go 
for them Mills' or I'll have you crimed for 
refusin' an order." 

Rabbie slid down from his place. "I sup- 
pose yer in chairge here, Shirty," he said. 
"But mind this — I'll bring the Mills', but as 
sure's death I'll hammer the heid aff ye when 
I get ye back yonder again. Mind that now," 
and he scrambled off back along the trench. 

He carried a couple of empty buckets with 



38 FRONT LINES 

him, and as he went lie heard the renewed 
crash of explosions behind him, and hastened 
his pace, knowing the desperate straits the 
two would be in without bombs to beat off the 
attack. The trench was badly wrecked, and 
there were many dead of both sides in it, so 
that for all his haste he found the going des- 
perately slow. 

The guns were firing heavily on both sides, 
but presently above the roar of their fire and 
the wailing rush of the passing shells Rabbie 
heard a long booming drone from overhead, 
glanced up and saw the plunging shape of an 
aeroplane swooping down and over his head 
towards the point he had left the others. It 
was past in a flash and out of sight beyond 
the trench wall that shut him in. But next 
instant Rabbie heard the sharp rattle of her 
machine-gun, a pause, and then another long 
rattle. Rabbie grunted his satisfaction, and 
resumed his toilsome clambering over the 
debris. " That'll gie the Fritzez something 
tae think about," he murmured, and then 
pounced joyfully on a full bucket of Mills' 
grenades lying beside a dead bomber. Many 



THE SUICIDE CLUB 39 

more grenades were scattered round, and 
Rabbie hastily filled one of his own buckets 
and grabbed up a sandbag he found partially 
filled with German grenades. 

He turned to hurry back, hearing as he 
did so another crackle of overhead machine- 
gun fire. Next moment the plane swept over- 
head with a rush, and was gone back towards 
the lines before Rabbie could well look up. 
Half-way back to where he had left the others 
he heard the crash of detonating bombs, and 
next moment came on Lauchie crouching at 
a corner of the trench, the blood streaming 
down his face, his last grenade in his hand, 
and his fingers on the pin ready to pull it. 
Rabbie plumped a bucket down beside him, 
and without words the two began plucking 
out the pins and hurling the grenades round 
the corner. 

" Where's the ithers?" shouted Rabbie 
when the shattering roar of their exploding 
grenades had died down. 

"Dead," said Lauchie tersely. "Except 
Shirty, an' he's sair wounded. I left him 



40 FRONT LINES 

llidin , in a bit broken dug-out half-a-dizen 
turns o' the trench back." 

"Come on," said Rabbie, rising abruptly. 
"We'll awa' back an' get him. 

"He said I was t' retire slow, an' hand 
them back as well's I could," said Lauchie. 

"I'm awa' back for him," said Rabbie. 
"Ye needna come unless ye like." 

He flung a couple of grenades round the 
corner ; Lauchie followed suit, and the instant 
they heard the boom of the explosions both 
pushed round and up the next stretch through 
the eddying smoke and reek, pulling the pins 
as they ran, and tossing the bombs ahead of 
them into the next section of trench. And 
so, in spite of the German bombers' resist- 
ance, they bombed their way back to where 
Shirty had been left. Several times they trod 
over or past the bodies of men killed by their 
bombs, once they encountered a wounded offi- 
cer kneeling with his shoulder against the 
trench wall and snapping a couple of shots 
from a magazine pistol at them as they 
plunged through the smoke. Rabbie stunned 
him with a straight and hard-flung bomb, 



THE SUICIDE CLUB 41 

leapt, dragging Lauchie with him, back into 
cover until the bomb exploded, and then ran 
forward again. He stooped in passing and 
picked np the pistol from beside the shat- 
tered body. " Might be useful," he said, 
' 'an' it's a good sooveneer onyway. I prom- 
ised a sooveneer tae yon French lassie back 
in Poppyring." 

They found Shirty crouched back and hid- 
den in the mouth of a broken-down dug-out, 
and helped him out despite his protests. "I 
was all right there," he said. "You two get 
back as slow as you can, and keep them back 
all " 

"See here, Shirty," Rabbie broke in, "yer 
no in charge o' the pairty now. Yer a cas- 
ualty an' I'm the senior — I've ma paybook 
here t' prove it if ye want, so just haud your 
wheesh an' come on." 

He hoisted the wounded man — Shirty 's leg 
was broken and he had many other minor 
wounds — to his shoulder, and began to move 
back while Lauchie followed close behind, 
halting at each corner to cover the retreat 
with a short bombing encounter. 



42 FRONT LINES 

Half-way back they met a strong support 
party which had been dispatched immediately 
after the receipt by the H.Q. signallers of a 
scribbled note dropped by a low-flying aero- 
plane. The party promptly blocked the 
trench, and prepared to hold it strongly until 
the time came again to advance, and the three 
bombers were all passed back to make their 
way to the dressing station. 

There Shirty was placed on a stretcher and 
made ready for the ambulance, and the other 
two, after their splinter cuts and several 
slight wounds had been bandaged, prepared 
to walk back. 

"So long, Shirty,' ' said Rabbie. "See ye 
again when ye come up an' rejine." 

"So long, chum," said Shirty, "an* I'm — 
er — I " And he stammered some halt- 
ing phrase of thanks to them for coming back 
to fetch him out. 

"Havers," said Rabbie, "I wisna goin' t' 
leave ye there tae feenish the war in a Fritz 
jail. An' yer forgettin' whit I promised ye 
back there when ye ordered me for they 
bombs — that I'd hammer yer heid aff when 



THE SUICIDE CLUB 43 

we came oot. I'll just mind ye o' that when 
ye jine up again." 

"Right-o," said Shirty happily. "I won't 
let you forget it. ' ' 

"I wunner," said Rabbie reflectively, light- 
ing a cigarette after Shirty had gone — "I 
wunner if he'll ever be fit t' jine again. I'd 
fair like t' hae anither bit scrap wi' him, for 
I never was richt satisfied wi' yon decesion 
against me." 

"He's like t' be Corporal or Sairgint time 
he comes oot again," said Lauchie. "Promo- 
tion's quick in they Reserve an' Trainin' 
Brigades at hame." 

"If we're no killed we're like t' be Cor- 
porals or Sairgints oorselves," said Rabbie. 
"When we're in action I'm thinkin' promo- 
tions are quick enought oot here in the Sui- 
cide Club." 



Ill 

IN THE WOOD 

The attack on the wood had begun soon after 
dawn, and it was no more than 8 a.m. when 
the Corporal was dropped badly wounded in 
the advance line of the attack where it had 
penetrated about four hundred yards into the 
wood. But it was well into afternoon before 
he sufficiently woke to his surroundings to 
understand where he was or what had hap- 
pened, and when he did so he found the real- 
isation sufficiently unpleasant. It was plain 
from several indications — the direction from 
which the shells bursting in his vicinity were 
coming, a glimpse of some wounded Germans 
retiring, the echoing rattle of rifle fire and 
crash of bombs behind him — that the bat- 
talion had been driven back, as half a dozen 
other battalions had been driven back in the 
course of the ebb-and-now fighting through 
the wood for a couple of weeks past, that he 

44 



IN THE WOOD 45 

was lying badly wounded and helpless to de- 
fend himself where the Germans could pick 
him up as a prisoner or finish him off with 
a saw-backed bayonet as the mood of his dis- 
coverers turned. His left leg was broken be- 
low the knee, his right shoulder and ribs 
ached intolerably, a scalp wound six inches 
long ran across his head from side to side — 
a wound that, thanks to the steel shrapnel 
helmet lying dinted in deep across the crown, 
had not split his head open to the teeth. 

He felt, as he put it to himself, "done in," 
so utterly done in, that for a good hour he 
was willing to let it go at that, to lie still and 
wait whatever luck brought him, almost in- 
different as to whether it would be another 
rush that would advance the British line and 
bring him within reach of his own stretcher- 
bearers, or his discovery by some of the Ger- 
man soldiers who passed every now and then 
close to where he lay. 

Thirst drove him to fumble for his water- 
bottle, only to find, when he had twisted it 
round, that a bullet had punctured it, and 
that it was dry; and, after fifteen tortured 



46 FRONT LINES 

minutes, thirst drove him to the impossible, 
and brought him crawling and dragging his 
broken leg to a dead body and its full bottle. 
An eager, choking swallow and a long breath- 
stopping, gurgling draught gave him more 
life than he had ever thought to feel again, 
a sudden revulsion of feeling against the 
thought of waiting helpless there to be picked 
up and carted to a German prison camp or 
butchered where he lay, a quick hope and a 
desperate resolve to attempt to escape such 
a fate. He had managed to crawl to the 
water-bottle; he would attempt to crawl at 
least a little nearer to the fighting lines, to 
where he would have more chance of coming 
under the hands of his own men. Without 
waste of time he took hasty stock of his 
wounds and set about preparing for his at- 
tempt. The broken leg was the most seri- 
ously crippling, but with puttees, bayonets, 
and trenching-tool handles he so splinted and 
bound it about that he felt he could crawl 
and drag it behind him. He attempted to 
bandage his head, but his arm and shoulder 
were so stiff and painful when he lifted his 



IN THE WOOD 47 

hand to his head that he desisted and satis- 
fied himself with a water-soaked pad placed 
inside a shrapnel helmet. Then he set out to 
crawl. 

It is hard to convey to anyone who has not 
seen such a place the horrible difficulty of the 
task the Corporal had set himself. The 
wood had been shelled for weeks, until al- 
most every tree in it had been smashed and 
knocked down and lay in a wild tangle of 
trunks, tops, and branches on the ground. 
The ground itself was pitted with big and 
little shell-holes, seamed with deep trenches, 
littered with whole and broken arms and 
equipments, German and British grenades 
and bombs, scattered thick with British and 
German dead who had lain there for any time 
from hours to weeks. And into and over it 
all the shells were still crashing and roaring. 
The air palpitated to their savage rushing, 
the ground trembled to the impact of their 
fall, and without pause or break the deep roll 
of the drumming gun-fire bellowed and thun- 
dered. But through all the chaos men were 
still fighting, and would continue to fight, and 



48 FRONT LINES 

the Corporal had set his mind doggedly to 
come somewhere near to where they fought. 
The penetration of such a jungle might have 
seemed impossible even to a sound and unin- 
jured man; to one in his plight it appeared 
mere madness to attempt. And yet to at- 
tempt it he was determined, and being with- 
out any other idea in his throbbing head but 
the sole one of overcoming each obstacle as 
he came to it, had no time to consider the 
impossibility of the complete task. 

Now, two hundred yards is a short dis- 
stance as measurement goes, but into those 
two hundred yards through the chaos of 
wrecked wood the Corporal packed as much 
suffering, as dragging a passage of time, as 
many tortures of hope and fear and pain, as 
would fill an ordinary lifetime. Every yard 
was a desperate struggle, every fallen tree- 
trunk, each tangle of fallen branch, was a 
cruel problem to be solved, a pain-racked and 
laborious effort to overcome. A score of 
times he collapsed and lay panting, and re- 
signed himself to abandoning the struggle; 
and a score of times he roused himself and 



IN THE WOOD 49 

fought down numbing pain, and raised him- 
self on trembling arms and knees to crawl 
again, to wriggle through the wreckage, to 
hoist himself over some obstacle, to fight his 
way on for another yard or two. 

Every conscious thought was busied only 
and solely with the problems of his passage 
that presented themselves one by one, but at 
the back of his mind some self-working rea- 
son or instinct held him to his direction, took 
heed of what went on around him, guided 
him in action other than that immediately 
concerned with his passage. When, for in- 
stance, he came to a deep trench cutting 
across his path, he sat long with his whole 
mind occupied on the question as to whether 
he should move to right or left, whether 
the broken place half a dozen yards off the 
one way or the more completely broken one 
a dozen yards the other would be the best to 
make for, scanning this way down and that 
way up, a litter of barbed wire here and a 
barrier of broken branches there; and yet, 
without even lifting his mind from the prob- 
lem, he was aware of grey coats moving along 



50 FRONT LINES 

the trench towards him, had sense enough to 
drop flat and lie huddled and still until the 
Germans had passed. And that second mind 
again advised him against crawling down 
into the trench and making his easier way 
along it, because it was too probable it would 
be in use as a passage for Germans, wounded 
and unwouncled. 

He turned and moved slowly along the edge 
of the trench at last, and held to it for some 
distance, because the parapet raised along 
its edge held up many of the fallen trees and 
branches enough to let him creep under them. 
That advantage was discounted to some ex- 
tent by the number of dead bodies that lay 
heaped on or under the parapet and told of 
the struggles and the fierce fighting that had 
passed for possession of the trench, but on 
the whole the dead men were less difficult to 
pass than the clutching, wrenching fingers of 
the dead wood. The pains in his head, shoul- 
der, and side had by now dulled down to a 
dead numbness, but his broken leg never 
ceased to burn and stab with red-hot needles 
of agony; and for all the splints encasing it 



IN THE WOOD 51 

and despite all the care he took, there was 
hardly a yard of his passage that was not 
marked by some wrenching catch on his foot, 
some jarring shock or grind and grate of the 
broken bones. 

He lost count of time, he lost count of dis- 
tance, but he kept on crawling. He was ut- 
terly indifferent to the turmoil of the guns, 
to the rush and yell of the near-falling shells, 
the crash of their bursts, the whirr of the 
flying splinters. When he had been well and 
whole these things would have brought his 
heart to his mouth, would have set him duck- 
ing and dodging and shrinking. Now he paid 
them no fraction of his absorbed attention. 
But to the distinctive and rising sounds of 
bursting grenades, to the sharp whip and 
whistle of rifle bullets about him and through 
the leaves and twigs, he gave eager attention 
because they told him he was nearing his 
goal, was coming at last to somewhere near 
the fringe of the fighting. His limbs were 
trembling under him, he was throbbing with 
pain from head to foot, his head was swim- 
ming and his vision was blurred and dim, and 



52 FRONT LINES 

at last he was forced to drop and lie still and 
fight to recover strength to move, and sense 
to direct his strength. His mind cleared 
slowly, and he saw at last that he had come 
to a slightly clearer part of the wood, to a 
portion nearer its edge where the trees had 
thinned a little and where the full force of 
the shell blast had wrecked and re-wrecked 
and torn fallen trunks and branches to frag- 
ments. 

But although his mind had recovered, his 
body had not. He found he could barely raise 
himself on his shaking arms — had not the 
strength to crawl another yard. He tried and 
tried again, moved no more than bare inches, 
and had to drop motionless again. 

And there he lay and watched a fresh at- 
tack launched by the British into the wood, 
heard and saw the tornado of shell-fire that 
poured crashing and rending and shattering 
into the trees, watched the khaki figures 
swarm forward through the smoke, the spit- 
ting flames of the rifles, the spurting fire and 
smoke of the flung grenades. He still lay on 
the edge of the broken trench along which he 



IN THE WOOD 53 

had crept, and lie could just make out that 
this ran off at an angle away from him and 
that it was held by the Germans, and formed 
probably the point of the British attack. He 
watched the attack with consuming eager- 
ness, hope flaming high as he saw the khaki 
line press forward, sinking again to leaden 
depths as it halted or held or swayed back. 
To him the attack was an affair much more 
vital than the taking of the trench, the ad- 
vance by a few score yards of the British line. 
To him it meant that a successful advance 
would bring him again within the British 
lines, its failure leave him still within the 
German. 

Into the trench below him a knot of Ger- 
mans scrambled scuffling, and he lay huddled 
there almost within arm's length of them 
while they hoisted a couple of machine-guns 
to the edge of the trench and manned the par- 
apet and opened a hail of fire down the 
length of the struggling British line. Under 
that streaming fire the line wilted and with- 
ered; a fresh torrent of fire smote it, and it 
crumpled and gave and ebbed back. But 



54 FRONT LINES 

almost immediately another line swarmed up 
out of the smoke and swept forward, and this 
time, although the same flank and frontal fire 
caught and smote it, the line straggled and 
swayed forward and plunged into and over 
the German trench. 

The Corporal lying there on the trench edge 
was suddenly aware of a stir amongst the 
men below him. The edge where he lay half 
screened in a debris of green stuff and hud- 
dled beside a couple of dead Germans was 
broken down enough to let him see well into 
the trench, and he understood to the full the 
meaning of the movements of the Germans 
in the trench, of their hasty hauling down of 
the machine-guns, their scrambling retire- 
ment crouched and hurrying along the trench 
back in the direction from which he had come. 
The trench the British had taken ran out at 
a right angle from this one where he lay, 
and the Germans near him were retiring be- 
hind the line of trench that had been taken. 
And that meant he was as good as saved. 

A minute later two khaki figures emerged 
from a torn thicket of tree stumps and 



IN THE WOOD 55 

branches a dozen yards beyond the trench 
where he lay, and ran on across towards the 
denser wood into which the Germans had 
retreated. One was an officer, and close on 
their heels came half a dozen, a dozen, a 
score of men, all following close and pressing 
on to the wood and opening out as they went. 
One came to the edge of the trench where the 
machine-guns had been, and the Corporal 
with an effort lifted and waved an arm and 
shouted hoarsely to him. But even as he did 
so he realised how futile his shout was, how 
impossible it was for it to carry even the few 
yards in the pandemonium of noise that raved 
about them. But he shouted again, and yet 
again, and felt bitter disappointment as the 
man without noticing turned and moved along 
the trench, peering down into it. 

The Corporal had a sudden sense of some- 
one moving behind him, and twisted round in 
time to see another khaki figure moving past 
a dozen paces away and the upper half bodies 
of half a score more struggling through the 
thickets beyond. This time he screamed at 
them, but they too passed, unhearing and 



56 FRONT LINES 

unheeding. The Corporal dropped quivering 
and trying to tell himself that it was all right, 
that there would be others following, that 
some of them must come along the trench, 
that the stretcher-bearers would be following 
close. 

But for the moment none followed them, 
and from where they had vanished came a 
renewed uproar of grenade-bursts and rifle 
fire beating out and through the uproar of the 
guns and the screaming, crashing shells. The 
Corporal saw a couple of wounded come stag- 
gering back . . . the tumult of near fighting 
died down ... a line of German grey-clad 
shoulders and bobbing "coal-scuttle" helmets 
plunged through and beyond the thicket from 
which the khaki had emerged a few minutes 
before. And then back into the trench below 
him scuffled the Germans with their two 
machine-guns. With a groan the Corporal 
dropped his face in the dirt and dead leaves 
and groaned hopelessly. He was "done in," 
he told himself, "clean done in." He could 
see no chance of escape. The line had been 
driven back, and the last ounce of strength to 



IN THE WOOD 57 

crawl. . . . He tried once before he would 
finally admit that last ounce gone, but the 
effort was too much for his exhausted limbs 
and pain-wrenched body. He dropped to the 
ground again. 

The rapid clatter of the two machine-guns 
close to him lifted his head to watch. The 
main German trench was spouting dust and 
debris, flying clouds of leaves, flashing white 
slivers of bark and wood, under the torrent of 
shells that poured on it once more. The 
machine-guns below him ceased, and the 
Corporal concluded that their target had gone 
for the moment. But that intense bombard- 
ment of the trench almost certainly meant 
the launching of another British attack, and 
then the machine-guns would find their target 
struggling again across their sights and un- 
der their streaming fire. They had a good 
"field of fire," too, as the Corporal could 
see. The British line had to advance for the 
most part through the waist-high tangle of 
wrecked wood, but by chance or design a 
clearer patch of ground was swept close to 
the German trench, and as the advance 



58 FRONT LINES 

crossed this the two machine-guns on the 
flank near the Corporal would get in their 
work, would sweep it in enfilade, would be 
probably the worst obstacle to the advance. 
And at that a riot of thoughts swept the 
Corporal's mind. If he could out those 
machine-guns ... if he could out those 
machine-guns . . . but how? There were 
plenty of rifles near, and plenty of dead about 
with cartridges on them . . . but one shot 
would bring the Germans jumping from their 
trench on him. . . . Bombs now ... if he 
had some Mills' grenades . . . where had he 
seen. . . . 

He steadied himself deliberately and 
thought back. The whole wood was littered 
with grenades, spilt and scattered broadcast 
singly and in heaps — German stick-grenades 
and Mills'. He remembered crawling past a 
dead bomber with a bag full of Mills' beside 
him only a score of yards away. Could he 
crawl to them and back again ? The Germans 
in the trench might see him; and anyhow — 
hadn't he tried? And hadn't he found the 
last ounce of his strength gone ? 



IN THE WOOD 59 

But he found another last ounce. He half 
crawled, half dragged himself back and found 
his bag of grenades, and with the full bag 
hooked over his shoulder and a grenade 
clutched ready in his hand felt himself a new 
man. His strength was gone, but it takes 
little strength to pull the pin of a grenade, 
and if any German rushed him now, at least 
they'd go together. 

The machine-guns broke out again, and the 
Corporal, gasping and straining, struggled 
foot by foot back towards them. The per- 
sonal side — the question of his own situation 
and chances of escape — had left him. He had 
forgotten himself. His whole mind was 
centered on the attack, on the effect of those 
machine-guns' fire, on the taking of the Ger- 
man trench. He struggled past the break in 
the trench and on until he had shelter behind 
the low parapet. He wanted some cover. 
One grenade wasn't enough. He wanted to 
make sure, and he wouldn't chance a splinter 
from his own bomb. 

The machine-guns were chattering and 
clattering at top speed, and as he pulled the 



60 FRONT LINES 

pin of his first grenade the Corporal saw 
another gun being dragged up beside the 
others. He held his grenade and counted 
' ' one-and-two-and47irow — " and lobbed the 
grenade over into the trench under the very 
feet of the machine-gunners. He hastily 
pulled another pin and threw the grenade 
. . . and as a spurt of smoke and dust leaped 
from the trench before him and the first 
grenades crash-crashed, he went on pulling 
out the pins and flinging over others as fast 
as he could pitch. The trench spouted fire 
and dust and flying dirt and debris, the 
ground shook beneath him, he was half 
stunned with the quick-following reports — 
but the machine-guns had stopped on the 
first burst. 

That was all he remembered. This time 
the last ounce was really gone, and he was 
practically unconscious when the stretcher- 
bearers found him after the trench was taken 
and the attack had passed on deep into the 
wood. 

And weeks after, lying snug in bed in a 
London hospital, after a Sister had scolded 



IN THE WOOD 61 

him for moving in bed and reaching out for 
a magazine that had dropped to the floor, and 
told him how urgent it was that he must not 
move, and how a fractured leg like his must 
be treated gently and carefully if he did not 
wish to be a cripple for life, and so on and so 
forth, he grinned up cheerfully at her. ' ' Or- 
right, Sister." he said, "I'll remember. But 
it's a good job for me I didn't know all that, 
back there — in the wood." 



IV 

THE DIVING TANK 

His Majesty's land-ship Hotstuff was busy 
rebunkering and refilling ammunition in a 
nicely secluded spot under the lee of a cluster 
of jagged stumps that had once been trees, 
while her Skipper walked round her and made 
a careful examination of her skin. She bore, 
on her blunt bows especially, the marks of 
many bullet splashes and stars and scars, and 
on her starboard gun turret a couple of 
blackened patches of blistered paint where a 
persistent Hun had tried his ineffectual best 
to bomb the good ship at close quarters, with- 
out any further result than the burnt paint 
and a series of bullet holes in the bomber. 

As the Skipper finished his examination, 
finding neither crack, dent, nor damage to 
anything deeper than the paintwork, "All 
complete" was reported to him, and he and 
his crew proceeded to dine off bully beef, bis- 

62 



THE DIVING TANK 63 

cuits, and uncooked prunes. The meal was 
interrupted by a motor-cyclist, who had to 
leave his cycle on the roadside and plough 
on foot through the sticky mud to the Hot- 
stuff's anchorage, with a written message. 
The Skipper read the message, initialled the 
envelope as a receipt, and, meditatively chew- 
ing on a dry prune, carefully consulted a 
squared map criss-crossed and wriggled over 
by a maze of heavy red lines that marked the 
German trenches, and pricked off a course to 
where a closer-packed maze of lines was 
named as a Redoubt. 

The Signals dispatch-rider had approached 
the crew with an enormous curiosity and a 
deep desire to improve his mind and his 
knowledge on the subject of " Tanks." But 
although the copybook maxims have always 
encouraged the improvement of one's mind, 
the crew of the Hotstuff preferred to re- 
member another copybook dictum, ' ' Silence is 
golden," and with the warnings of many 
months soaked into their very marrows, and 
with a cautious secrecy that by now had be- 
come second, if not first, nature to them, re- 



64 FRONT LINES 

turned answers more baffling in their fullness 
than the deepest silence would have been. 

"Is it true that them things will turn a 
point-blank bullet?" asked the dispatch-rider. 

"Turn them is just the right word, 
Signals, ' ' said the spokesman. * ' The armour 
plating doesn't stop 'em, you see. They go 
through, and then by an iw-genious arrange- 
ment of slanted steel Venetian shutters just 
inside the skin, the bullets are turned, rico 
up'ard on to another set o' shutters, deflect 
again out'ards an' away. So every bullet 
that hits us returns to the shooters, with 
slightly decreased velocity nat 'rally, but suf- 
ficient penetratin' power to kill at consider- 
able range." 

Signals stared at him suspiciously, but he 
was so utterly solemn and there was such an 
entire absence of a twinkling eye or ghostly 
smile amongst the biscuit-munchers that he 
was puzzled. 

"An' I hear they can go over almost 
any thin'— trenches, an' barbed wire, an' shell- 
holes, an' such-like?" he said interrogatively. 

" Almost anything," repeated the spokes- 



THE DIVING TANK 65 

man, with just a shade of indignation in his 
tone. ' ' She 's built to go over anything with- 
out any almost about it. Why, this mornin'," 
he turned to the crew, "what was the name o' 
that place wi' the twelve-foot solid stone wall 
round it? You know, about eleven, miles 
behind the German lines. ' ' 

"Eleven miles?" said the Signaller in 
accents struggling between doubt and 
incredulity. 

"About that, accordin' to the map," said 
the other. "That's about our average 
cruise." 

"But — but," objected the Signaller, "how 
wasn't you cut off — surrounded — er " 

"Cut off," said the Hotstuff cheerfully, 
"why, of course, we was surrounded, and cut 
off. But what good was that to 'em? You've 
seen some of us walkin' up an' over their 
front lines, and them shootin' shells an' rifles 
an' Maxims at us. But they didn't stop us, 
did they? So how d'you suppose they stop 
us comin' back? But about that wall," he 
went on, having reduced the Signaller to pon- 
dering silence. ' ' We tried to butt through it 



66 FRONT LINES 

an' couldn't, so we coupled on the grapplin'- 
liook bands, an' walked straight up one side 
an' down the other." 

"Yes," put in one of the other Hotstuffs, 
''an' doin' it the boxful o' tea an' sugar that 
was up in the front locker fell away when she 
upended and tumbled down to the other end. 
Spilt every blessed grain we had. I don't 
hold wi' that straight-up-and-down manoover 
myself. ' ' 

"Oh, well," said the first man, "I don't 
know as it was worse than when we was bein ' 
towed across the Channel. She makes a 
rotten bad sea boat, I must confess." 

"Towed across?" said the startled Signal- 
ler. "You don't mean to say she floats?" 

"Why, of course," said the Hotstufr" 
simply. "Though, mind you, we're not de- 
signed for long voyages under our own 
power. The whole hull is a watertight tank — 
wi' longtitoodinal an' transverse bulkheads, 
an' we've an adjustable screw propeller. I 
dunno as I ought to be talkin' about that, 
though," and he sank his voice and glanced 
cautiously round at the Skipper folding up 



THE DIVING TANK 67 

his map. "Don't breathe a word o' it to a 
soul, or I might get into trouble. It's a little 
surprise," he concluded hurriedly, as he saw 
the Skipper rise, "that we're savin' up for 
the Hun when we gets to the Rhine. He 
reckons the Rhine is goin' to hold us up, don't 
he? Wait till he sees the Tanks swim it an' 
walk up the cliffs on the other side." 

The Skipper gave a few quiet orders and 
the crew vanished, crawling, and one by one, 
into a little man-hole. The Signaller's in- 
formant found time for a last word to him in 
passing. "I b'lieve we're takin' a turn down 
across the river an' canal," he said. "If you 
follow us you'll most likely see us do a prac- 
tice swim or two. ' ' 

"Well, I've met some dandy liars in my 
time," the Signaller murmured to himself, 
"but that chap's about IT." 

But he stayed to watch the Tank get under 
way, and after watching her performance and 
course for a few hundred yards he returned to 
his motor-bike with struggling doubts in his 
own mind as to how and in which direction he 



68 FRONT LINES 

was likely to be the bigger fool — in believing 
or in refusing to believe. 

The Hotstuff snorted once or twice, shook 
herself, and rumbled internally; her wheel- 
bands made a slow revolution or two, churn- 
ing out a barrowload or so of soft mud, and 
bit through the loose upper soil into the 
firmer ground; she jerk-jerked convulsively 
two or three times, crawled out of the deep 
wheel-ruts she had dug, turned, nosing a cau- 
tious way between the bigger shell craters, 
and then ploughed off on a straight course 
towards the road across the sticky mud — mud 
which the dispatch-rider had utterly failed to 
negotiate, and which, being impassable to him, 
he had, out of the knowledge born of long 
experience, concluded impassable to anything, 
light or heavy, that ran on wheels. A wide 
ditch lay between the field and the road, but 
the Hotstuff steered straight for it and 
crawled tranquilly across. The dispatch-rider 
watched the progress across the mud with 
great interest, whistled softly as he saw the 
Tank breast the ditch and reach out for the 
far bank, with her fore-end and nearly half 



THE DIVING TANK 69 

her length hanging clear out over the water, 
gasped as the bows dipped and fell down- 
ward, her fore-feet clutching at and resting 
on the further bank, her bows and under-body 
— the descriptive terms are rather mixed, but 
then, so is the name and make-up of a Land 
Ship — hitting the water with a mighty splash. 
And then, in spite of himself, he broke from 
wide grins into open laughter as the Hotstuff 
got a grip of the far bank, pushed with her 
hind and pulled with her fore legs and 
dragged herself across. If ever you have 
seen a fat caterpillar perched on a cabbage 
leaf's edge, straining and reaching out with 
its front feet to reach another leaf, touching 
it, catching hold, and letting go astern, to 
pull over the gap, you have a very fair idea 
of what the Hotstuff looked like crossing that 
ditch. 

She wheeled on to the road, and as the dis- 
patch-rider, with mingled awe, amazement, 
and admiration, watched her lumbering off 
down it he saw an oil-blackened hand poked 
out through a gun port and waggled trium- 
phantly back at him. ''Damme," he said, "I 



70 FRONT LINES 

believe she can swim, or stand on her head, 
or eat peas off a knife. She looks human- 
intelligent enough for anything." 

But the Hotstuff on that particular trip was 
to display little enough intelligence, but in- 
stead an almost human perversity, adding 
nothing to her battle honours but very much 
to her skipper's and crew's already over- 
crowded vocabulary of strong language. 
The engineer showed signs of uneasiness as 
she trundled down the road, cocking his head 
to one side and listening with a look of 
strained attention, stooping his ear to various 
parts of the engines, squinting along rods, 
touching his finger-tips to different bearings. 

"What's wrong?" asked the Skipper. 
"Isn't she behaving herself!" 

The engineer shook his head. "There's 
something not exactly right wi' her," he said 
slowly. "I doubt she's going to give trou- 
ble." 

He was right. She gave trouble for one 
slow mile, more trouble for another half- 
mile, and then most trouble of all at a spot 
where the road had degenerated into a sea 



THE DIVING TANK 71 

of thin, porridgy mud. We will say nothing 
of the technical trouble, but it took four solid 
hours to get the Hotstuff* under way again. 
The road where she halted was a main thor- 
oughfare to the firing line, and the locality 
of her break-down, fortunately for the traffic, 
was where a horse watering trough stood a 
hundred yards back from the road, and there 
was ample room to deflect other vehicles past 
the Hotstuff obstacle, which lay right in the 
fair-way. All the four hours a procession of 
motor-cars and lorries, G.S. waggons, and 
troops of horses streamed by to right and left 
of the helpless Hotstuff. The cars squirted 
jets of liquid mud on her as they splashed 
past, the lorries flung it in great gouts at 
her, the waggons plastered her lower body 
liberally, and the horses going to and from 
water raised objections to her appearance 
and spattered a quite astonishing amount of 
mud over her as high as her roof. 

When finally she got her engines running 
and pulled out of the quagmire, it was too 
late to attempt to get her up into the ac- 
tion she had been called to, so her bows were 



72 FRONT LINES 

turned back to her anchorage and she plodded 
off home. And by the luck of war, and his 
volunteering out of turn for the trip, the same 
dispatch-rider brought another message to 
her early next morning in her berth behind 
the line. 

The crew's night had been spent on in- 
ternal affairs, and, since there had been no 
time to attempt to remove any of the accu- 
mulation of mud that covered every visible 
inch of her, she looked like a gigantic wet 
clay antheap. 

The dispatch-rider stared at her. 

"Looks as if she wanted her face washed," 
he remarked. "What has she been up to? 
Thought you said she was going swimming. 
She don't look much as if she'd had a bath 
lately." 

His former glib informant slowly straight- 
ened a weary back, checked a tart reply, and 
instead spoke with an excellent simulation 
of cheeriness. 

"Didn't you come an' watch us yesterday, 
then?" he said. "Well, you missed a treat — 
brand-new dodge our Old Man has invented 



THE DIVING TANK 73 

hisself. When we got 'er in the canal, we 
closed all ports, elevated our periscope an' 
new telescopic air-toob, submerged, and sank 
to the bottom. And she walked four meas- 
ured miles under water along the bottom o' 
the canal. That" — and he waved his hand 
towards the mud-hidden Hotstuff — ' ' is where 
she got all the mud from." 

And to this day that dispatch-rider doesn't 
know whether he told a gorgeous truth or a 
still more gorgeous lie. 



V 

IN THE MIST 

When the Lieutenant turned out of his dug- 
out in the very small hours, he found with 
satisfaction that a thin mist was hanging over 
the ground. 

''Can't see much," he said half an hour 
later, peering out from the front trench. 
"But so much the better. Means they won't 
be so likely to see us. So long, old man. 
Come along, Studd." 

The other officer watched the two crawl out 
and vanish into the misty darkness. At in- 
tervals a flare light leaped upward from one 
side or the other, but it revealed nothing of 
the ground, showed only a dim radiance in 
the mist and vanished. Rifles crackled spas- 
modically up and down the unseen line, and 
very occasionally a gun boomed a smothered 
report and a shell swooshed over. But, on the 

whole, the night was quiet, or might be called 

74 



IN THE MIST 75 

so by comparison with other nights, and the 
quietness lent colour to the belief that the 
Hun was quietly evacuating his badly battered 
front line. It was to discover what truth was 
in the report that the Lieutenant had crawled 
out with one man to get as near as possible 
to the enemy trench — or, still better, into or 
over it. 

Fifty yards out the two ran into one of their 
own listening posts, and the Lieutenant halted 
a moment and held a whispered talk with the 
N.C.O. there. It was all quiet in front, he 
was told, no sound of movement and only a 
rifle shot or a light thrown at long intervals. 

"Might mean anything, or nothing," 
thought the Lieutenant. "Either a trench 
full of Boche taking a chance to sleep, or a 
trench empty except for a 'caretaker' to 
shoot or chuck up an odd light at intervals. ' ' 

He whispered as much to his companion and 
both moved carefully on. The ground was 
riddled with shell-holes and was soaking wet, 
and very soon the two were saturated and 
caked with sticky mud. Skirting the holes 
and twisting about between them was con- 



76 FRONT LINES 

fusing to any sense of direction, but the two 
had been well picked for this special work and 
held fairly straight on their way. No light 
had shown for a good many minutes, and the 
Lieutenant fancied that the mist was thick- 
ening. He halted and waited a minute, strain- 
ing his eyes into the mist and his ears to 
catch any sound. There was nothing appar- 
ently to see or hear, and he rose to his knees 
and moved carefully forward again. As he 
did so a flare leaped upward with a long 
hiss and a burst of light glowed out. It 
faintly illumined the ground and the black 
shadows of shell-holes about them, and — the 
Lieutenant with a jump at his heart stilled 
and stiffened — not six feet away and straight 
in front, the figure of a man in a long grey 
coat, his head craned forward and resting 
on his arms crossed in front of him and 
twisted in an attitude of listening. Studd, 
crawling at the Lieutenant's heels, saw at 
the same moment, as was told by his hand 
gripped and pressing a warning on the Lieu- 
tenant's leg. The light died out, and with 
infinite caution the Lieutenant slid back level 



IN THE MIST 77 

with Studd and, motioning him to follow, 
lay flat and hitched himself a foot at a time 
towards the right to circle round the re- 
cumbent German. The man had not been 
facing full on to them, but lay stretched 
and looking toward their left, and by a care- 
ful circling right the Lieutenant calculated 
he would clear and creep behind him. A 
big shell-crater lay in their path, and after 
a moment's hesitation the Lieutenant slid 
very quietly down into it. Some morsels 
of loose earth crumbled under him, rolled 
down and fell with tiny splashings into the 
pool at the bottom. To the Lieutenant the 
noise was most disconcertingly loud and 
alarming, and cursing himself for a fool not 
to have thought of the water and the cer- 
tainty of his loosening earth to fall into it, 
he crouched motionless, listening for any 
sound that would tell of the listening Ger- 
man's alarm. 

Another light rose, filling the mist with 
soft white radiance and outlining the edge 
of the crater above him. It outlined also 
the dark shape of a figure halted apparently 



78 FRONT LINES 

in the very act of crawling down into the 
crater from the opposite side. The Lieuten- 
ant's first flashing thought was that the Ger- 
man watcher had heard him and was mov- 
ing to investigate, his second and quick-fol- 
lowing was of another German holding still 
until the light fell. But a third idea came 
so instantly on the other two that, before the 
soaring flare dropped, he had time to move 
sharply, bringing the man's outline more 
clearly against the light. That look and 
the shape, beside but clear of the body, of a 
bent leg, crooked knee upward, confirmed his 
last suspicion. Studd slid over soundless 
as a diving otter and down beside him, and 
the Lieutenant whispered, "See those two 
on the edge?" 

"Both dead, sir," said Studd, and the Lieu- 
tenant nodded and heaved a little sigh of 
relief. "And I think that first was a dead 
'un too." 

"Yes," whispered the Lieutenant. "Looked 
natural and listening hard. Eemember now, 
though, he was bareheaded. Dead all right. 
Come on." 



IN THE MIST 79 

They crept out past the two dead men, and, 
abating no fraction of their caution, moved 
noiselessly forward again. They passed 
many more dead in the next score of yards, 
dead twisted and contorted to every possible 
and impossible attitude of unmistakable death 
and uncannily life-like postures, and came 
at last to scattered fragments and loose 
hanging strands of barbed-wire entangle- 
ments. Here, according to previous arrange- 
ments, Studd — ex-poacher of civilian days 
and expert scout of the battalion — moved 
ahead and led the way. Broken strands of 
wire he lifted with gingerly delicate touch 
and laid aside. Fixed ones he raised, rolled 
silently under and held up for the Lieutenant 
to pass. Taut ones he grasped in one hand, 
slid the jaws of his wire-nippers over and cut 
silently between his left-hand fingers, so that 
the fingers still gripped the severed ends, re- 
leased the ends carefully, one hand to each, 
and squirmed through the gap. 

There was very little uncut wire, but the 
stealthy movements took time, and half an 
hour had passed from first wire to last and 



80 FRONT LINES 

to the moment when the Lieutenant, in imita- 
tion of the figure before him, flattened his 
body close to the muddy ground and lay 
still and listening. For five long minutes 
they lay, and then Studd twisted his head 
and shoulders back. "Nobody," he whis- 
pered. "Just wait here a minute, sir." He 
slipped back past the Lieutenant and al- 
most immediately returned to his side. " I've 
cut the loose wires away," he said. "Mark 
this spot and try'n hit it if we have to bolt 
quick. See — look for this," and he lifted 
a bayoneted rifle lying beside them, and 
stabbed the bayonet down into the ground 
with the rifle butt standing up above the edge 
of the broken parapet. 

"Cross the trench," whispered the Lieu- 
tenant, "and along behind it. Safer there. 
Any sentry looking out forward ? ' ' 

Studd vanished over the parapet and the 
Lieutenant squirmed after him. The trench 
was wide and broken-walled back and front, 
and both clambered up the other side and 
began to move along the far edge. In some 
places the trench narrowed and deepened, in 



IN THE MIST 81 

others it widened and shallowed in tumbled 
shell-craters, in others again was almost 
obliterated in heaped and broken earth. The 
mist had closed down and thickened to a 
white-grey blanket, and the two moved more 
freely, standing on their feet and walking 
stooped and ready to drop at a sound. They 
went for a considerable distance without 
seeing a single German. 

Studd halted suddenly on the edge of a 
trench which ran into the one they were 
following. 

1 ' Communication trench," said the Lieu- 
tenant softly. ''Doesn't seem to be a soul 
in their front line." 

"No, sir," said Studd, but there was a 
puzzled note in his voice. 

"Is this their front line we've been mov- 
ing along?" said the Lieutenant with sudden 
suspicion. "Those lights look further off 
than they ought." 

The dim lights certainly seemed to be far 
out on their left and a little behind them. 
A couple of rifles cracked faintly, and they 
heard a bullet sigh and whimper overhead. 



82 FRONT LINES 

Closer and with sharper reports half a dozen 
rifles rap-rapped in answer — but the reports 
were still well out to their left and behind 
them. 

1 ' Those are German rifles behind us. We Ve 
left the front line, ' ' said the Lieutenant with 
sudden conviction. "Struck slanting back. 
Been following a communication trench. 
Damn!" 

Studd without answering dropped suddenly 
to earth and without hesitation the Lieuten- 
ant dropped beside him and flattened down. 
A long silence, and the question trembling 
on his lips was broken by a hasty movement 
from Studd. "Quick, sir — back," he said, 
and hurriedly wriggled back and into a shal- 
low hole, the Lieutenant close after him. 

There was no need of the question now. 
Plainly both could hear the squelch of feet, 
the rustle of clothes, the squeak and click of 
leather and equipment. Slowly, one by one, 
a line of men filed past their hiding-place, 
looming grey and shadowy through the mist, 
stumbling and slipping so close by that to 
the Lieutenant it seemed that only one down- 



IN THE MIST 83 

ward glance from one passing figure was 
needed to discover them. Tumultuous 
thoughts raced. What should he do if they 
were discovered? Pass one quick word to 
Studd to lie still, and jump and run, trusting 
to draw pursuit after himself and give Studd 
a chance to escape and report? Or call Studd 
to run with him, and both chance a bolt back 
the way they came? The thick mist might 
help them, but the alarm would spread quick- 
ly to the front trench. ... Or should he 
snatch his revolver — he wished he hadn't 
put it back in his holster — blaze off all his 
rounds, yell and make a row, rousing the 
German trench to fire and disclose the 
strength holding it? Could he risk move- 
ment enough to get his revolver clear ? And 
all the time he was counting the figures 
that stumbled past — five . . . six . . . seven 
. . . eight. . . . Thirty-four he counted and 
then, just as he was going to move, another 
lagging two. After that and a long pause he 
held hurried consultation with Studd. 

"They're moving up the way we came 
down," he said. "We're right off the front 



84 FRONT LINES 

line. Must get back. Daren't keep too close 
to this trench though. D'you think we can 
strike across and find the front line about 
where we crossed?" 

" Think so, sir," answered Studd. "Must 
work a bit left-handed." 

' ' Come on then. Keep close together, ' ' and 
they moved off. 

In three minutes the Lieutenant stopped 
with a smothered curse at the jar of wire 
caught against his shins. " 'Ware wire," 
he said, and both stooped and felt at it. ' * Nip- 
pers," he said. "We must cut through." 
He pulled his own nippers out and they 
started to cut a path. "TangV his nippers 
swinging free of a cut wire struck against 
another, and on the sound came a sharp word 
out of the mist ahead of them and apparently 
at their very feet a guttural question in un- 
mistakable German. Horrified, the Lieuten- 
ant stood stiff frozen for a moment, turned 
sharp and fumbled a way back, his heart 
thumping and his nerves tingling in antici- 
pation of another challenge or a sudden shot. 
But there was no further sound, and pres- 



IN THE MIST 85 

ently lie and Studd were clear of the wire and 
hurrying as silently as they could away from 
the danger. 

They stopped presently, and the Lieuten- 
ant crouched and peered about him. "Now 
where are we?" he said, and then, as he 
caught the sound of suppressed chuckling 
from Studd crouched beside him, "What's 
the joke? I don't see anything specially 
funny about this job." 

"I was thinkin' of that Germ back there, 
sir," said Studd, and giggled again. "About 
another two steps an' we'd have fell fair 
on top of 'im. Bit of a surprise like for 'im, 
sir. ' ' 

The Lieutenant grinned a little himself. 
"Yes," he said, "but no more surprise than 
I got when he sang out. Now what d'you 
think is our direction?" 

Studd looked round him, and pointed 
promptly. The Lieutenant disagreed and 
thought the course lay nearly at right angles 
to Studd 's selection. He had his compass 
with him and examined it carefully. "This 
bit of their front line ran roughly north and 



86 FRONT LINES 

south," he said. "If we move west it must 
fetch us back on it. We must have twisted 
a bit coming out of that wire — but there's 
west," and he pointed again. 

"I can't figure it by compass, sir," said 
Studd, "but here's the way I reckon we 
came." He scratched lines on the ground 
between them with the point of his wire nip- 
pers. "Here's our line, and here's theirs — 
running this way. ' ' 

"Yes, north," said the Lieutenant. 

"But then it bends in towards ours — like 
this — an' ours bends back." 

"Jove, so it does," admitted the Lieuten- 
ant, thinking back to the trench map he had 
studied so carefully before leaving. "And 
we moved north behind their trench, so might 
be round the corner; and a line west would 
just carry us along behind their front line." 

Studd was still busy with his scratchings. 
"Here's where we came along and turned 
off the communication trench. That would 
bring them lights where we saw them — about 
here. Then we met them Germs and struck 
off this way, an' ran into that wire, an' then 



IN THE MIST 87 

back — here. So I figure we got to go that 
way," and he pointed again. 

"That's about it," agreed the Lieutenant. 
"But as that's toward the wire and our 
friend who sang out, we'll hold left a bit 
to try and dodge him." 

He stood and looked about him. The mist 
was wreathing and eddying slowly about 
them, shutting out everything except a tiny 
patch of wet ground about their feet. There 
was a distinct whiteness now about the mist, 
and a faint glow in the whiteness that told 
of daylight coming, and the Lieutenant moved 
hurriedly. "If it comes day and the mist 
lifts we're done in," he said, and moved in 
the chosen direction. They reached wire 
again, but watching for it this time avoided 
striking into it and turned, skirting it to- 
wards their left. But the wire bent back 
and was forcing them left again, or circling 
back, and the Lieutenant halted in despair. 
1 ' We '11 have to cut through again and chance 
it," he said. "We can't risk hanging about 
any longer." 

"I'll just search along a few yards, sir, 



88 FRONT LINES 

and see if there's an opening," said Studd. 

"Both go," said the Lieutenant. "Better 
keep together." 

Within a dozen yards both stopped 
abruptly and again sank to the ground, the 
Lieutenant cursing angrily under his breath. 
Both had caught the sound of voices, and 
from their lower position could see against 
the light a line of standing men, apparently 
right across their path. A spatter of rifle- 
fire sounded from somewhere out in the mist, 
and a few bullets whispered high overhead. 
Then came the distant thud, thud, thud of 
half a dozen guns firing. One shell wailed 
distantly over, another passed closer with 
a savage rush, a third burst twenty yards 
away with a glaring flash that penetrated 
even the thick fog. The two had a quick 
glimpse of a line of Germans in long coats 
ducking their "coal-scuttle" helmets and 
throwing themselves to ground. They were 
not more than thirty feet away, and there 
were at least a score of them. When their 
eyes recovered from the flash of the shell, 
the two could see not more than half a dozen 



IN THE MIST 89 

figures standing, could hear talking and 
laughing remarks, and presently heard scuf- 
fling sounds and saw figure after figure 
emerge from the ground. 

"Trench there," whispered Studd, leaning 
in to the Lieutenant's ear. "They jumped 
down." 

"Yes," breathed the Lieutenant. He was 
fingering cautiously at the wire beside him. 
It was staked out, and as far as he could 
discover there was something like a two-foot 
clearance between the ground and the bot- 
tom strands. It was a chance, and the po- 
sition was growing so desperate that any 
chance was worth taking. He touched 
Studd 's elbow and began to wriggle under 
the wires. Six feet in they found another 
line stretched too low to crawl under and 
could see and feel that the patch of low wire 
extended some feet. "More coming," whis- 
pered Studd, and the Lieutenant heard again 
that sound of squelching steps and moving 
men. They could still see the grey shadowy 
figures of the first lot standing in the same 
place, and now out of the mist emerged 



90 FRONT LINES 

another shadowy group moving down the line 
and past it. There was a good deal of low- 
toned calling and talking between the two 
lots, and the Lieutenant, seizing the chance 
to work under cover of the noise, began 
rapidly to nip his way through the wire. It 
was only because of their low position they 
could see the Germans against the lighter 
mist, and he was confident, or at least hoped, 
that from the reversed position it was un- 
likely they would be seen. The second party 
passed out of sight, and now the two could see 
a stir amongst the first lot, saw them hoist 
and heave bags and parcels to their shoulders 
and backs, and begin to move slowly in the 
opposite direction to that taken by the party 
passing them. 

"Eation party or ammunition carriers,' ' 
said Studd softly. 

"And moving to the front line," said the 
Lieutenant quickly. In an instant he had a 
plan made. "We must follow them. They'll 
guide us to the line. We keep close as we 
can . . . not lose touch and not be seen. 
Quick, get through there." He started to nip 



IN THE MIST 91 

rapidly through the wires. The party had 
moved and the outline of the last man was 
blurring and fading into the mist. The Lieu- 
tenant rose and began to stride over the low 
wires. A last barrier rose waist high. With 
an exclamation of anger he fell to work with 
the nippers again, Studd assisting him. The 
men had vanished. The Lieutenant thrust 
through the wires. His coat caught and he 
wrenched it free, pushed again and caught 
again. This time the stout fabric of the 
trench coat held. There was no second to 
waste. The Lieutenant flung loose the waist- 
belt, tore himself out of the sleeves and broke 
clear, leaving the coat hung in the wires. 
' ' Freer for running if we have to bolt at the 
end," he said, and hurried after the vanished 
line, with Studd at his heels. They caught 
up with it quickly — almost too quickly, be- 
cause the Lieutenant nearly overran one lag- 
gard who had halted and was stooped or 
kneeling doing something to his bundle on 
the ground. The Lieutenant just in time saw 
him rise and swing the bundle to his shoul- 
der and hurry after the others. Behind him 



92 FRONT LINES 

came the two, close enough to keep his dim 
outline in sight, stooping low and ready to 
drop flat if need be, moving as silently as 
possible, checking and waiting crouched down 
if they found themselves coming too close on 
their leader. So they kept him in sight until 
he caught the others up, followed them again 
so long that a horrible doubt began to fill the 
Lieutenant's mind, a fear that they were be- 
ing led back instead of forward. He would 
have looked at his compass, but at that mo- 
ment the dim grey figures before him van- 
ished abruptly one by one. 

He halted, listening, and Studd at his el- 
bow whispered "Down into a trench, sir." 
Both sank to their knees and crawled care- 
fully forward, and in a minute came to the 
trench and the spot where the man had van- 
ished. "Coming near the front line, I ex- 
pect," said the Lieutenant, and on the word 
came the crack of a rifle from the mist ahead. 
The Lieutenant heaved a sigh of relief. 
"Keep down," he said. "Work along this 
trench edge. Sure to lead to the front line." 

A new hope flooded him. There was still 



IN THE MIST 93 

the front trench to cross, but the ease with 
which they had first come over it made him 
now, turning the prospect over in his mind 
as he crawled, consider that difficulty with 
a light heart. His own trench and his friends 
began to seem very near. Crossing the neu- 
tral ground, which at other times would have 
loomed as a dangerous adventure, was noth- 
ing after this hair-raising performance of 
blundering about inside the German lines. 
He moved with certainty and confidence, al- 
though yet with the greatest caution. Twice 
they came to a belt of wire running down 
to the edges of the trench they followed. 
The Lieutenant, after a brief pause to look 
and listen, slid down into the trench, passed 
the wire, climbed out again, always with 
Studd close behind him. Once they lay flat 
on the very edge of the trench and watched 
a German pass along beneath them so close 
they could have put a hand on his helmet. 
Once more they crouched in a shell-hole while 
a dozen men floundered along the trench. 
And so they came at last to the front line. 
Foot by foot they wriggled close up to it. 



94 FRONT LINES 

The Lieutenant at first saw no sign of a 
German, but Studd beside him gripped his 
arm with a warning pressure, and the Lieu- 
tenant lay motionless. Suddenly, what he 
had taken to be part of the outline of the 
parapet beyond the trench moved and raised, 
and he saw the outline of a steel-helmeted 
head and a pair of broad shoulders. The 
man turned his head and spoke, and with a 
shock the Lieutenant heard a murmur of 
voices in the trench, saw figures stir and 
move in the mist. Studd wriggled noise- 
lessly closer and, with his lips touching the 
Lieutenant's ear, whispered "I know where 
we are. Remember this bit we're on. We 
crossed to the left of here. ,, 

They backed away from the trench a little 
and worked carefully along it to their left, 
and presently Studd whispered, "About here, 
I think." They edged closer in, staring 
across for sight of the silhouette of the rifle 
butt above the parapet. The mist had grown 
thicker again and the parapet showed no 
more than a faint grey bulk against the 
lighter grey. The trench appeared to be full 



IN THE MIST 95 

of men — " standing to" the Lieutenant sup- 
posed they were — and they moved at the most 
appalling risk, their lives hanging on their 
silence and stealth, perhaps on the chance 
of some man climbing back out of the trench. 
The Lieutenant was shivering with excite- 
ment, his nerves jumping at every movement 
or sound of a voice from the trench beside 
them. 

Studd grasped his elbow again and pointed 
to the broken edge of trench where they lay, 
and the Lieutenant, thinking he recognised 
the spot they had climbed out on their first 
crossing, stared hard across to the parapet 
in search of the rifle butt. He saw it at last. 
But what lay between it and them? Were 
there Germans crouching in the trench bot- 
tom? But they must risk that, risk every- 
thing in a dash across and over the parapet. 
A puff of wind stirred and set the mist eddy- 
ing and lifting a moment. They dare wait 
no longer. If the wind came the mist would 
go, and with it would go their chance of 
crossing the No Man's Land. He whispered 
a moment to Studd, sat up, twisted his 



96 FRONT LINES 

legs round to the edge of the trench, slid 
his trench dagger from its sheath and set- 
tled his fingers to a firm grip on the handle, 
took a deep breath, and slid over feet fore- 
most into the trench. In two quick strides 
he was across it and scrambling up the para- 
pet. The trench here was badly broken down 
and a muddy pool lay in the bottom. Studd 
caught a foot in something and splashed 
heavily, and a voice from a yard or two on 
their left called sharply. The Lieutenant 
slithering over the parapet heard and cringed 
from the shot he felt must come. But a 
voice to their right answered; the Lieuten- 
ant slid down, saw Studd scramble over after, 
heard the voices calling and answering and 
men splashing in the trench behind them. 
He rose to his feet and ran, Studd following 
close. From the parapet behind came the 
spitting bang of a rifle and the bullet whipped 
past most uncomfortably close. It would 
have been safer perhaps to have dropped to 
shelter in a shell-hole and crawled on after 
a reasonable wait, but the Lieutenant had 
had enouarh of crawling and shell-holes for 



IN THE MIST 97 

one night, and was in a most single-minded 
hurry to get away as far and as fast as he 
could from Germans' neighbourhood,. He 
and Studd ran on, and no more shots followed 
them. The mist was thinning rapidly, and 
they found their own outposts in the act of 
withdrawal to the trench. The Lieutenant 
hurried past them, zigzagged through their 
own wire, and with a gasp of relief jumped 
down into the trench. He sat there a few 
minutes to recover his breath and then started 
along the line to find Headquarters and make 
his report. 

On his way he met the officer who had 
watched them leave the trench and was 
greeted with a laugh. " Hullo, old cock. 
Some mud ! You look as if you 'd been crawl- 
ing a bit. See any Boche?" 

"Crawling!" said the Lieutenant. "Any 
Boche! I've been doing nothing but crawl 
for a hundred years — except when I was 
squirming on my face. And I've been fall- 
ing over Boche, treading on Boche, bumping 
into Boche, listening to Boche remarks — oh, 



98 FRONT LINES 

ever since I can remember," and he laughed, 
just a trifle hysterically. 

"Did you get over their line then? If 
so, you're just back in time. Mist has clean 
gone in the last few minutes." A sudden 
thought struck the Lieutenant. He peered 
long and carefully over the parapet. The 
last wisps of mist were shredding away and 
the jumble of torn ground and trenches and 
wire in the German lines was plainly visible. 
"Look," said the Lieutenant. "Three or 
four hundred yards behind their line — hang- 
ing on some wire. That's my coat. ..." 



VI 

SEEING RED 

The Mess, having finished reading the letters 
just brought in, were looking through the 
home papers. Harvey, who used to be a bank 
clerk, giggled over a page in Pumch and 
passed it round. ' ' Pretty true, too, isn 't it 1 " 
he said. The page was one of those silly 
jolly little drawings by Bateman of men with 
curly legs, and the pictures showed typical 
scenes from the old life of an average City 
clerk, trotting to business, playing dominoes, 
and so on, and the last one of a fellow tear- 
ing over the trenches in a charge with a 
real teeth-gritted, blood-in-his-eye look, and 
the title of the lot was "It's the Same Man." 

Everyone grinned at it and said "Pretty 
true," or something like that. "It reminds 
me ..." said the Australian. 

Now this is the Australian's story, which 
he said he had got from one of the fellows 

99 



100 FRONT LINES 

in the show. For the truth or untruth I give 
no guarantee, but just tell the tale for what 
it's worth. 

Teddy Silsey was an Australian born and 
bred, but he could not be called a typical Aus- 
tralian so far as people in the Old Country 
count him "typical." With them there is a 
general impression that every real Austra- 
lian can "ride and shoot," and that men in 
Australia spend the greater part of their nor- 
mal existence galloping about the "ranch" 
after cattle or shooting kangaroos. Teddy 
Silsey wasn't one of that sort. He was one 
of the many thousands of the other sort, who 
have been reared in the cities of Australia, 
and who all his life had gone to school and 
business there and led just as humdrum and 
peaceable a life as any London City clerk 
of the Punch picture. 

When the War came, Teddy was thirty 
years of age, married, and comfortably set- 
tled in a little suburban house outside Syd- 
ney, and already inclined to be — well, if not 
fat, at least distinctly stout. He had never 
killed anything bigger than a fly or met any- 



SEEING RED 101 

thing more dangerous than a mosquito ; and 
after an unpleasant episode in which his wife 
had asked him to kill for the Sunday dinner a 
chicken which the poultry people had stupidly 
sent up alive, an episode which ended in 
Teddy staggering indoors with blood-smeared 
hands and chalky face while a headless fowl 
flapped round the garden, both Teddy and 
his wife settled down to a firm belief that he 
"had a horror of blood," and told their 
friends and neighbours so with a tinge of 
complacency in the fact. 

Eemembering this, it is easy to understand 
the consternation in Mrs. Teddy's mind when, 
after the War had been running a year, Teddy 
announced that he was going to enlist. He 
was firm about it too. He had thought the 
whole thing out — house to be shut up, she 
to go stay with her mother, his separation 
allowance so much, and so much more in 
the bank to draw on, and so on. Her re- 
monstrances he met so promptly that one can 
only suppose them anticipated. His health? 
Never had a day's sickness, as she knew. 
His business prospects? The country's pros- 



102 FRONT LINES 

pects were more important, and his Country 
Wanted Him. His "horror of blood"? 
Teddy twisted uneasily. "I've a horror of 
the whole beastly business," he said — "of 
war and guns and shooting, of being killed, 
and ... of leaving you." This was diplo- 
macy of the highest, and the resulting inter- 
lude gently slid into an acceptance of the 
fact of his going. 

He went, and — to get along with the War — 
at last came to France, and with his battalion 
into the trenches. He had not risen above 
the rank of private, partly because he lacked 
any ambition to command, and in larger part 
because his superiors did not detect any 
ability in him to handle the rather rough- 
and-ready crowd who were in his lot. Far 
from army training and rations doing him 
physical harm, he throve on them, and even 
put on flesh. But because he was really a 
good sort, was always willing to lend any 
cash he had, take a fatigue for a friend, joke 
over hardships and laugh at discomforts, he 
was on excellent terms with his fellows. He 
shed a good many, if not all, of his suburban 



SEEING RED 103 

peace ways, was a fairly good shot on the 
ranges, and even acquired considerable skill 
and agility at bayonet practice. But he never 
quite shed his "horror of blood." Even 
after he had been in action a time or two 
and had fired many rounds from his rifle, 
he had a vague hope each time he pulled 
trigger that his bullet might not kill a man, 
might at most only wound him enough to 
put him out of action. The first shell cas- 
ualty he saw in their own ranks made him 
literally and actually sick, and even after 
he had seen many more casualties than he 
cared to think about he still retained a 
squeamish feeling at sight of them. And in 
his battalion's share of The Push, where 
there was a good deal of close-quarter work 
and play with bombs and bayonet, he never 
had urgent need to use his bayonet, and when 
a party of Germans in a dugout refused to 
surrender, and persisted instead in firing up 
the steps at anyone who showed at the top, 
Teddy stood aside and left the others to do 
the bombing-out. 

It was ridiculous, of course, that a fight- 






104 FRONT LINES 

ing man who was there for the express pur- 
pose of killing should feel any qualms about 
doing it, but there it was. 

Then came the day when the Germans made 
a heavy counter-attack on the positions held 
by the Australians. The positions were not 
a complete joined-up defensive line along the 
outer front. The fighting had been heavy 
and bitter, and the German trenches which 
were captured had been so thoroughly pound- 
ed by shell fire that they no longer existed 
as trenches, and the Australians had to be 
satisfied with the establishment of a line of 
posts manned as strongly as possible, with 
plenty of machine-guns. 

Teddy's battalion was not in this front 
fringe when the counter-attack, launched 
without any warning bombardment, flooded 
suddenly over the outer defences, surged 
heavily back, drove in the next lines, and 
broke and battered them in and down under- 
foot. 

Something like a couple of thousand yards 
in over our lines that first savage rush 
brought the Germans, and nearly twoscore 



SEEING RED 105 

guns were in their hands before they checked 
and hesitated, and the Australian supports 
flung themselves in on a desperate counter- 
attack. The first part of the German pro- 
gramme was an undoubted and alarming suc- 
cess. The posts and strong points along 
our front were simply overwhelmed, or sur- 
rounded and cut off, and went under, mak- 
ing the best finish they could with the bayo- 
net, or in some cases — well, Teddy Silsey and 
a good many other Australians saw just what 
happened in these other cases, and are not 
likely ever to forget it. The German attack 
— as in many historic cases in this war — ap- 
peared to fizzle out in the most amazing fash- 
ion after it had come with such speed and 
sweeping success for so far. Our guns, of 
course, were hard at work, and were doing 
the most appalling damage to the dense 
masses that offered as targets ; but that would 
hardly account for the slackening of the rush, 
because the guns had waked at the first crash 
of rifle and bomb reports, and the Germans 
were under just about as severe a fire for 
the second half of their rush as they were 



106 FRONT LINES 

at the end of it when they checked. There 
appeared to be a hesitation about their move- 
ments, a confusion in their plans, a doubt as 
to what they ought to do next, that halted 
them long enough to lose the great advantage 
of their momentum. The first hurried coun- 
ter-attack flung in their face was compara- 
tively feeble, and if they had kept going 
should easily have been brushed aside. Thir- 
ty-odd guns were in their hands; and, most 
dangerous of all, one other short storm for- 
ward would have brought them swamping 
over a whole solid mass of our field guns — 
which at the moment were about the only 
thing left to hold back their attack — and 
within close rifle and machine-gun range of 
the fringe of our heavies. But at this criti- 
cal stage, for no good reason, and against 
every military reason, they, as so often be- 
fore, hesitated, and were lost. Another Aus- 
tralian counter-attack, this time much bet- 
ter organised and more solidly built, was 
launched headlong on their confusion. They 
gave ground a little in some places, tried to 
push on in others, halted and strove to se- 



SEEING RED 107 

cure positions and grip the trenches in others. 
The Australians, savagely angry at being so 
caught and losing so much ground, drove 
in on them, bombing, shooting, and bayonet- 
ing; while over the heads of the front-rank 
fighters the guns poured a furious tempest 
of shrapnel and high explosive on the masses 
that sifted and eddied behind. The issue 
hung in doubt for no more than a bare five 
minutes. The Germans who had tried to 
push on were shot and cut down ; the parties 
that held portions of trench were killed or 
driven out ; the waverers were rushed, beaten 
in, and driven back in confusion on the sup- 
ports that struggled up through the tornado 
of shell-fire. Then their whole front crum- 
pled, and collapsed, and gave, and the Aus- 
tralians began to recover their ground almost 
as quickly as they had lost it. 

Now Teddy Silsey, while all this was going 
on, had been with his company in a position 
mid-way across the depth of captured ground. 
He and about forty others, with two officers, 
had tried to hold the battered remnant of 
trench they were occupying, and did actually 



108 FRONT LINES 

continue to hold it after the rush of the Ger- 
man front had swept far past them. They 
were attacked on all sides, shot away their 
last cartridge, had their machine-guns put 
out of action by bombs, had about half their 
number killed, and almost every man of the 
remainder wounded. They were clearly cut 
off, with thousands of Germans between them 
and their supports, could see fresh German 
forces pressing on past them, could hear the 
din of righting receding rapidly farther and 
farther back. The two officers, both wounded/ 
but able more or less to stand up, conferred 
hastily, and surrendered. 

Of this last act Teddy Silsey was unaware, 
because a splinter of some sort, striking on 
his steel helmet, had stunned him and dropped 
him completely insensible. Two dead men 
fell across him as he lay, and probably ac- 
counted for the Germans at the moment over- 
looking him as they collected their prisoners. 

Teddy wakened to dim consciousness to 
find a number of Germans busily and con- 
fusedly engaged in setting the bit of trench 
in a state of defence. They trod on him and 



SEEING RED 109 

the two dead men on top of him a good deal, 
but Teddy, slowly taking in his situation, and 
wondering vaguely what his next move should 
be, did the wisest possible thing under the 
circumstances — lay still. 

A little before this the Australian counter- 
attack had been sprung, and before Teddy 
had made up his mind about moving he be- 
gan to be aware that the battle was flood- 
ing back on him. The Germans beside him 
saw it too, and, without any attempt to de- 
fend their position, clambered from the 
trench and disappeared from Teddy's imme- 
diate view. Teddy crawled up and had a 
look out. It was difficult to see much at 
first, because there was a good deal of smoke 
about from our bursting shells, but as the 
counter-attack pushed on and the Germans 
went back, the shells followed them, and pres- 
ently the air cleared enough for Teddy to 
see glimpses of khaki and to be certain that 
every German he saw was getting away from 
the khaki neighbourhood as rapidly as pos- 
sible. In another minute a couple of Aus- 
tralians, hugging some machine-guns parts, 



110 FEONT LINES 

tumbled into his trench, two or three others 
arrived panting, and in a moment the ma- 
chine-gun was in action and streaming fire 
and bullets into the backs of any parties of 
Germans that crossed the sights. 

One of the new-comers, a sergeant, looked 
round and saw Teddy squatting on the broken 
edge of the trench and looking very sick and 
shaken. "Hullo, mate," said the sergeant, 
glancing at the patch of coloured cloth on 
Teddy's shoulder that told his unit. "Was 
you with the bunch in this hole when Fritz 
jumped you?" Teddy gulped and nodded. 
"You stopped one?" said the sergeant. 
" Where 'd it get you?" 

"No," said Teddy; "I— I think I'm all 
right. Got a bit of a bump on the head." 

" 'Nother bloke to say 'Go' bless the tin- 
'at makers' in 'is prayers every night." He 
turned from Teddy. "Isn't it time we 
humped this shooter a bit on again, boys?" 
he said. 

"Looks like the Boche was steadyin' up a 
bit," said a machine-gunner. "An' our line's 
bumped a bit o ' a snag along on the left there. 



SEEING RED 111 

I think we might spray 'em a little down that 
way." 

They slewed the gun in search of fresh 
targets, while from a broken trench some 
score yards from their front a gathering vol- 
ume of rifle-fire began to pelt and tell of 
the German resistance stiffening. 

"Strewth," growled the sergeant, "this is 

no bon ! If we give 'em time to settle in 

Hullo," — he broke off, and stared out in front 
over the trench edge — "wot's that lot? They 
look like khaki. Prisoners, by cripes ! ' ' 

Every man peered out anxiously. Two to 
three hundreds yards away they could see 
emerging from the broken end of a communi- 
cation trench a single file of men in khaki 
without arms in their hands, and with half a 
dozen rifle- and bayonet-armed Germans 
guarding them. Teddy, who was watching 
with the others, exclaimed suddenly. "It's 
my lot, ' ' he said. ' ' That 's the captain — him 
with the red hair; and I recognise Big Mick, 
and Terry — Terry's wounded — see him limp. 
That's my mate Terry." 

The firing on both sides had slacked for a 



112 FRONT LINES 

moment, and none of the watchers missed 
one single movement of what followed. It 
is unpleasant telling, as it was unutterably 
horrible watching. The prisoners, except the 
two officers, who were halted above ground, 
were guided down into a portion of trench 
into which they disappeared. The guards 
had also remained above. What followed 
is best told briefly. The two officers, in full 
view of the watchers, were shot down as 
they stood, the rifle muzzles touching their 
backs. The Germans round the trench edge 
tossed bombs down on the men penned below. 
Before the spurting smoke came billowing 
up out of the trench, Teddy Silsey leaped to 
his feet with a scream, and flung himself 
scrambling up the trench wall. But the ser- 
geant, with a gust of bitter oaths, gripped 
and held him. ''Get to it there," he snarled 
savagely at the men about the gun. "D'you 
want a better target?" The gun muzzle 
twitched and steadied and ripped out a stream 
of bullets. The Germans about the trench 
lip turned to run, but the storm caught and 
cut them down — except one or two who 






SEEING RED 113 

ducked down into the trench on top of their 
victims. Teddy found them there three min- 
utes after, stayed only long enough to finish 
them, and ran on with the other Australians 
who swarmed yelling forward to the attack 
again. Others had seen the butchery, and 
those who had not quickly heard of it. Every 
group of dead Australians discovered as the 
line surged irresistibly forward was declared, 
rightly or wrongly, to be another lot of mur- 
dered prisoners. The advance went with a 
fury, with a storming rage that nothing could 
withstand. The last remnant of organised 
German defence broke utterly, and the sup- 
ports coming up found themselves charged 
into, hustled, mixed up with, and thrown into 
utter confusion by the mob of fugitives and 
the line of shooting, bombing, bayoneting 
Australians that pressed hard on their heels. 
The supports tried to make some sort of 
stand, but they failed, were borne back, bus- 
tled, lost direction, tried to charge again, 
broke and gave, scattering and running, were 
caught in a ferocious flank fire, reeled and 
swung wide from it, and found themselves 



114 FRONT LINES 

penned and jammed back against a broad, 
deep, and high belt of their own barbed wire. 
Some of them, by quick work and running 
the gauntlet of that deadly flanking fire, won 
clear and escaped round the end of the belt. 
The rest — and there were anything over two 
thousand of them — were trapped. The Aus- 
tralian line closed in, pouring a storm of 
rifle fire on them. Some tried to tear a way 
through, or over, or under the impenetrable 
thicket of their own wire; others ran wildly 
up and down looking for an opening, for any 
escape from those pelting bullets; others 
again held their hands high and ran towards 
the crackling rifles shrieking "Kamerad" 
surrenders that were drowned in the drum- 
ming roll of rifle fire; and some few threw 
themselves down and tried to take cover 
and fire back into the teeth of the storm that 
beat upon them. But the Australian line 
closed in grimly and inexorably, the men 
shooting and moving forward a pace or two, 
standing and shooting — shooting — shooting. 
. . . Teddy Silsey shot away every round 
he carried, ceased firing only long enough to 



SEEING RED 115 

snatch up a fresh supply from a dead man's 
belt, stood again and shot steadily and with 
savage intensity into the thinning crowd that 
struggled and tore at the tangled mass of 
wire. 

And all the time he cursed bitterly and 
abominably, reviling and pouring oaths of 
vengeance on the brutes, the utter savages 
who had murdered his mates in cold blood. 
To every man who came near him he had 
only one message — "Kill them out. They 
killed their prisoners. I saw them do it. 

Kill the !" with a shot after each 

sentence. 

And there was a killing. There were other 
results — the lost ground recaptured and 
made good; the taken guns retaken, five of 
them damaged and others with the unex- 
ploded destroying charges set and ready for 
firing; some slight gains made at certain 
points. But the Australians there will always 
remember that fight for the big killing, for 
those murderer Huns pinned against their 
own wire, for the burning hot barrels of the 
rifles, for the scattered groups of their own 



116 FRONT LINES 

dead — their murdered-prisoner dead — and 
for the two thousand-odd German bodies 
counted where they fell or hung limp in the 
tangles of their barbed wire. 

And next day Teddy Silsey volunteered for 
the Bombing Company, the Suicide Club, as 
they call themselves. He wanted close-up 
work, he explained. With a rifle you could 
never be sure you got your own man. With 
a bomb you could see him — — and he detailed 
what he wanted to see. He appeared to have 
completely forgotten his "horror of blood." 



vn 

AN AIR BARRAGE 

The Gunnery Officer was an enthusiast on 
his work — in fact, if you took the Squadron's 
word for it, he went past that and was an 
utter crank on machine-guns and everything 
connected with them. They admitted all the 
benefits of this enthusiasm, the excellent 
state in which their guns were always to be 
found, the fact that in air fighting they prob- 
ably had fewer stoppages and gun troubles 
than any other Squadron at the Front; but 
on the other hand they protested that there 
was a time and place for everything, and that 
you could always have too much of a good 
thing. It was bad enough to have ''Guns" 
himself cranky on the subject, but when he 
infected the Recording Officer with his craze, 
it was time to kick. "Guns" usually had 
some of the mechanism of his pets in his 

pockets, and he and the R.O. could be seen 
117 



118 FRONT LINES 

in the ante-room fingering these over, gloat- 
ing over them or discussing some technical 
points. They had to be made to sit apart 
at mess because the gun-talk never ceased 
so long as they were together, and the two at 
the same table were enough to bring any real 
game of Bridge or Whist to utter confusion. 
As one of their partners said, "I never know 
whether Guns is declaring No Trumps or 
tracer bullets or Hearts or ring sights. If 
you ask what the score is, he starts in to reel 
off the figures of the Squadron's last shoot- 
ing test; he'll fidget to finish the most ex- 
citing rubber you ever met and get away to 
his beastly armoury to pull the innards out 
of some inoffensive Lewis. He's hopeless." 
Guns and the E.O. between them appar- 
ently came to a conclusion that we were 
chucking the war away because we didn't 
concentrate enough on machine-gun fright- 
fulness. They'd have washed out the whole 
artillery probably, Archies included, if they'd 
been asked, and given every man a machine- 
gun on his shoulder and a machine-pistol in 
his hip-pocket. They wasted a morning and 



AN AIR BARRAGE 119 

an appalling number of rounds satisfying 
themselves that machine-guns would cut away 
barbed-wire entanglements, stealing a roll 
of wire from some unsuspecting Engineers' 
dump, erecting a sample entanglement in 
the quarry, and pelting it with bullets. And 
they called the CO. ''narrow-minded" when 
he made a fuss about the number of rounds 
they'd used, and reminded them barbed wire 
didn't figure in air fighting. They tramped 
miles across country, one carrying a Vickers 
and the other a Lewis, to settle some argu- 
ment about how far or how fast a man could 
hump the guns; they invented fakements 
enough to keep a private branch of the Pat- 
ents Office working overtime logging them up. 

It sounds crazy, but then, as the Squadron 
protested, they, Guns especially, were crazy, 
and that's all there was to it. 

But with these notions of theirs about the 
infallibility of machine-guns, and the range 
of their usefulness, you will understand how 
their minds leaped to machine-gun tactics 
when the Hun night-fliers began to come over 
and bomb around the 'drome. The first nisrht 



120 FEONT LINES 

they came Guns nearly broke his neck by 
falling into a deep hole in his mad rush to 
get to the anti-aircraft machine-guns on the 
'drome near the sheds, and he alternated be- 
tween moping and cursing for three days be- 
cause the Huns had gone before he could get 
a crack at them. He cheered up a lot when 
they came the next time and he and the R.O. 
shot away a few-million rounds, more or 
less. But as he didn't fetch a feather out 
of them, and as the Huns dropped their eggs 
horribly close to the hangars, the two were 
not properly satisfied, and began to work out 
all sorts of protective schemes and sit up as 
long as the moon was shining in hopes of a 
bit of shooting. 

Their hopes were fully satisfied, or anyhow 
the Squadron's more than were, because the 
Huns made a regular mark of the 'drome 
and strafed it night after night. And for 
all the rounds they shot, neither Guns nor 
the R.O. ever got a single bird, although 
they swore more than once that they were 
positive they had winged one. As none came 
down on our side of the lines, this claim 



AN AIR BARRAGE 121 

was a washout, and the two got quite wor- 
ried about it and had to stand an unmerci- 
ful amount of chaff from the others on the 
dud shooting. 

After a bit they evolved a new plan. Care- 
ful investigation and inquiry of different 
pilots in the Squadron gave them the ground- 
work for the plan. In answer to questions, 
some of the pilots said that if they were in 
the place of the Huns and wanted to find the 
'drome in the dark, they would steer for the 
unusual- shaped clump of wood which lay be- 
hind the 'drome. Some said they would fol- 
low the canal, others the road, others various 
guides, but all agreed that the wood was 
the object the Huns would steer for. This 
found, all the pilots again agreed it was a 
simple matter to coast along the edge of the 
wood, which would show up a black blot on 
the ground in the moonlight, find the tongue 
or spur of trees that ran straight out towards 
the 'drome, and, keeping that line, must fly 
exactly over the hangars. One or two nights' 
careful listening to the direction of the ap- 
proaching and departing Hun engines con- 



122 FRONT LINES 

firmed the belief that the Huns were working 
on the lines indicated, and after this was 
sure the plan progressed rapidly. 

The two machine-guns on the 'drome were' 
trained and aimed in daylight to shower bul- 
lets exactly over the tip of the tongue of 
wood. A patent gadget invented by Guns 
allowed the gun-muzzles a certain amount 
of play up and down, play which careful 
calculation showed would pour a couple of 
streams of bullets across the end of the 
wood up and down a height extending to 
about a thousand feet, that is, 500 above and 
500 below the level at which it was estimated 
the Huns usually flew on these night raids. 
It simply meant that as soon as the sound 
was judged to be near enough the two guns 
only had to open fire, to keep pouring out 
bullets to make sure that the Huns had to 
fly through the stream and "stop one" or 
more. It was, in fact, a simple air barrage 
of machine-gun bullets. 

With the plan perfected, the two enthusi- 
asts waited quite impatiently for the next 
strafe. Fortunately the moon was up fairly 



AN AIR BARRAGE 123 

early, so that now there was no need to sit 
up late for the shoot, and the second night 
after the preparations were complete, to the 
joy of Guns and the E.O. (and the discomfort 
of the others), there was a beautiful, still, 
moonlight night with every inducement for 
the Huns to come along. 

The two ate a hurried dinner with ears 
cocked for the first note of the warning 
which would sound when the distant noise of 
engines was first heard. Sure enough they 
had just reached the sweets when the signal 
went, and the two were up and off before the 
lights could be extinguished. They arrived 
panting at their stations to find the gun- 
crews all ready and waiting, made a last 
hasty examination to see everything was in 
order, and stood straining their ears for the 
moment when they reckoned the Huns would 
be approaching the barrage area, and when 
they judged the moment had arrived opened 
a long steady stream of fire. The drone of 
the first engine grew louder, passed through 
the barrage, and boomed on over the 'drome 
without missing a beat. There came the old 



124 FRONT LINES 

familiar "Phe^e-e-w — BANG! . . . e-e-e-ew 
— BANG ! ' ' of a couple of falling bombs, and 
the first engine droned on and away. Two 
minutes later another was heard, and Guns 
and the R.O., no degree disheartened or dis- 
couraged by their first failure, let go an- 
other stream of lead, keeping the gun-muz- 
zles twitching up and down as rapidly as 
they could. The second Hun repeated the 
performance of the first ; and a third did like- 
wise. After it was all over Guns and the 
R.O. held a council and devised fresh and 
more comprehensive plans, which included 
the use of some extra guns taken from the 
machines. For the moment we may leave 
them, merely mentioning that up to now and 
even in their newer plans they entirely neg- 
lected any consideration of rather an impor- 
tant item in their performance, namely, the 
ultimate billet of their numerous bullets. 

From the point of view of the defence it is 
an important and unpleasant fact that an air 
barrage eventually returns to the ground. 
Guns and the R.O. had been pumping out 
bullets at a rate of some hundreds per min- 



AN AIR BARRAGE 125 

ute each, and all those bullets after miss- 
ing their target had to arrive somewhere 
on the earth. The gunners' interest in them 
passed for the moment as soon as the bul- 
lets had failed to hit their mark, and after- 
wards they came to remember with amaze- 
ment that ever they could have been so 
idiotically unconsidering. 

Some distance from the 'drome, and in a 
line beyond the tip of the wood, there stood 
a number of Nissen huts which housed a 
Divisional Staff, and the inevitable conse- 
quence was that those up-and-down twitch- 
ing gun-muzzles sprayed showers of lead in 
gusts across and across the hutments. The 
General Commanding the Division was in 
the middle of his dinner with about five staff 
officers round the table when the first ''aero- 
plane over" warning went on this particular 
night of the new air barrage. The lights in 
the Mess hut were not extinguished, because 
full precautions had been taken some nights 
before to have the small window-space fully 
and closely screened against the possibility 
of leakage of a single ray of light. One or 



126 FRONT LINES 

two remarks were made quite casually about 
the nasty raiding habits of the Huns, but 
since no bombs had come near in the earlier 
raids, and the conclusion was therefore rea- 
sonable that the Divisional H.Q. had not been 
located, nobody there worried much over the 
matter, and dinner proceeded. 

They all heard the drone of the Hun en- 
gine, and, because it was a very still night, 
they heard it rather louder than usual. Some- 
one had just remarked that they seemed to 
be coming closer to-night, when the further 
remarks were violently interrupted by a 
clashing and clattering B-bang . . . br-r-rip- 
rap, ba-bang-bang, the splintering, ripping 
sound of smashed wood, the crash, clash 
tinkle of a bottle burst into a thousand frag- 
ments on the table under their startled eyes. 
The barrage bullets had returned to earth. 

The group at the table had time for no more 
than a pause of astonishment, a few exclama- 
tions, a hasty pushing back of chairs, when 
rip-rap-bang-bang-bang down came the sec- 
ond spray of bullets from those jerking muz- 
zles over on the 'drome. Now a bullet hitting 



AN AIR BARRAGE 127 

any solid object makes a nasty and most dis- 
concerting sort of noise ; but when it hits the 
tin roof of a Nissen hut, tears through it and 
the wood lining inside, passes out again or 
comes to rest in the hut, the noises become 
involved and resemble all sorts of queer 
sounds from kicking a tea-tray to treading on 
an empty match-box. The huts were solidly 
sand-bagged up their outside walls to a height 
of some feet, but had no overhead cover what- 
ever. The third burst from Guns and the 
E.O. arrived on the hut at exactly the same 
moment as the General and his Staff arrived 
on the floor as close as they could get to the 
wall and the protecting sandbags. They 
stayed there for some exciting minutes while 
Guns shot numerous holes in the roof, splin- 
tered the furniture, and shot the dinner piece- 
meal off the table. 

The shooting and the hum of the enemy 
engine ceased together, and the General and 
his Staff gathered themselves off the floor 
and surveyed the wreckage about them. "I 
just moved in time," said the Brigade-Major, 
and pointed to a ragged hole in the seat of 



128 FRONT LINES 

his chair. "D'you suppose it was a fluke, 
or have they got this place spotted?" asked 
the Captain. "Nasty mess of the roof," said 
someone else. The General confined himself 
to less coherent but much more pungent re- 
marks on all Huns in general, and night- 
raiders in particular. They seated them- 
selves, and the waiter was just beginning to 
mop up the smashed bottle of red wine, when 
the distant hum of another engine was heard. 
This time the barraged ones reached the floor 
just a shade ahead of the first tearing burst 
from Guns and the R.O., and again they held 
their breath and cowered while the bullets 
clashed and banged on the tin roof, smacked 
and cracked on the ground outside, beat an- 
other noisy banging tattoo across the next- 
door huts. The group stayed prone rather 
longer after the ceasing of fire and engine 
hum, and had little more than risen to their 
feet when the third outbreak sent them fling- 
ing down into cover again. 

After another and very much longer pause 
they very gingerly resumed their places at 
the table, sitting with chairs turned to posi- 



AN AIR BARRAGE 129 

tions which would allow evacuation with the 
least possible delay. The conversation for 
the rest of the dinner was conducted in 
hushed whispers and with six pair of ears on 
the alert for the first suspicion of the sound 
of an approaching engine. It was agreed by 
all that the Hun must have them spotted, and 
the only matter for surprise was that some 
of the bombs heard exploding in the distance 
had not been dropped on them. It was also 
agreed very unanimously, not to say emphat- 
ically, that the first job for a party in the 
morning was the digging of a solidly con- 
structed dug-out. ''Sand-bags on the roof 
might be good enough for bullets," said the 
General, "but we've got to allow for bombs 
next time, and there's nothing for that but 
a good dug-out." 

Someone suggested moving the H.Q., but 
this was rejected since they were busy at 
the time, and it would mean a good deal of 
time lost and work dislocated. The General 
decided to hang on for a bit and see what 
turned up. 

Next morning dug-outs were started and 



130 FRONT LINES 

thickish weather the next night prevented 
further raids and allowed satisfactory prog- 
ress to be made on the shelters. The fol- 
lowing night was clear again, but dinner 
passed without any alarm, and everyone, ex- 
cept the Brigade-Major, who had some ur- 
gent work to keep him up, turned in early. 

At about 11.30 p.m. the first Hun came 
over, and at the 'drome the waiting and ex- 
pectant Guns and E.O. set up their new and 
improved barrage, with four machine-guns 
all carefully trained and set to sweep over 
the same end of the same wood. 

The General was awakened by the first tea- 
tray bang-banging on adjacent tin roofs, and, 
without pausing to think, rolled out of bed 
and bumped on to the floor just as a couple 
of strays from the outside edge of the bar- 
rage banged, ripped, and cracked through 
his roof and walls. He crawled at top pace 
to the wall, cursing his hardest, groped round 
in the dark and found a pair of boots and 
a British Warm, struggled into these, sitting 
on the cold floor in his pyjamas, while a tor- 
nado of bullets hailed and clashed and banged 



AN AIR BARRAGE 131 

across the Nissen hut roofs of the camp. He 
took a quick chance offered by a lull in the 
firing, flung the door open, and set off at a 
floundering run for the dug-out. As he dou- 
bled along the duckboards he heard the dron- 
ing roar of an engine coming closer and 
closer, made a desperate spurt, expecting 
every moment to hear the ominous whistle 
and resounding crash of a falling and burst- 
ing bomb, reached the dug-out entrance, 
hurled himself through it, and fell in a heap 
on top of the Brigade-Major cautiously feel- 
ing his way down the dark steps. They 
reached the bottom in a tumbled heap and 
with a bump, their language rising in a min- 
gled and turgid flow to the delighted ears of 
a Staff-Lieutenant, shivering at the top of 
the stairs in his pyjamas with his breeches 
under his arm and his tunic thrown round his 
chilly shoulders. But his grins cut off short, 
and he, too, hurtled down the steps as a bomb 
burst a few hundred yards off with a re- 
sounding and earth-shaking crash. 

Sitting there in the dark for the next hour 
the General meditated many things, including 



132 FRONT LINES 

the mysterious ways of air Huns who so ac- 
curately machine-gunned his camp, and yet 
dropped nine out of ten of their bombs at 
various distances up to a full mile away 
from it. 

This mystery led him next day to diverge 
from his way and ride across the fields to the 
'drome to make a few inquiries into the ways 
of night-fliers. Guns was busy making some 
adjustments to his barrage guns with re- 
newed determination to bring a Hun down 
some night. The General saw him, and rode 
over and asked a few questions, and listened 
with a growing suspicion darkening his brow 
to Guns' enthusiastic description of the bar- 
rage plan. He cut Guns short with an abrupt 
question, " Where do your bullets come 
down?" 

Guns paused in bewilderment, and stared 
vacantly a moment at the empty sky. Some- 
how now in daylight it seemed so very ob- 
vious the bullets must come down; whereas 
shooting up into the dark it had never oc- 
curred. The General pulled his horse round 
and rode straight over to the Squadron of- 



AN AIR BARRAGE 133 

fice. There he found the Major and a map, 
had the exact position of the barrage guns 
pointed out to him, and in turn pointed out 
where the H.Q. camp lay. The E.O., who 
was working in the outer office, sat shivering 
at the wrathful remarks that boiled out of 
the next room and ended with a demand for 
the presence of the Gunnery Officer. The 
R.O. himself departed hurriedly to send him, 
and then took refuge in the hangar farthest 
removed from the office. A sense of fair play 
and sharing the blame drove him reluctantly 
back to the office in time to hear the effective 
close of the General's remarks. 

i l Barrage, sir ! — barrage ! Splashing thou- 
sands of bullets all over a country scattered 
with camps. Are you mad, sir? Air bar- 
rage! Go' bless your eyes, man, d'you think 
you're in London that you must go filling the 
sky with barrages and bullets and waking 
me and every other man within miles with 
your cursed row. Suppose you had shot 
someone — suppose you have shot someone. 
Blank blank your air barrage. You'd bet- 
ter go back to England, where you'll be in 



134 FRONT LINES 

the fashion with your air barrages and anti- 
aircraft. Am I to be driven from my bed on 
a filthy cold night to . . ."he spluttered ex- 
plosively and stopped short. If the Division 
heard the details of his share in the incident, 
had the chance to picture him racing for the 
dug-out, sitting shivering in scanty night at- 
tire, and add to the picture as they'd cer- 
tainly do, the joke would easily outlive the 
war and him. "That will do, sir," he said 
after a brief pause, "I'll have a word with 
your Major and leave him to deal with you." 

Guns came out with his head hanging, to 
join the pale-cheeked R.O. and escape with 
him. 

Ten minutes after a message came to him 
that the General wanted him in the C.O.'s 
office, and Guns groaned and went back to 
hear his sentence, estimating it at anything 
between "shot at dawn" and cashiered, 
broke, and sent out of the Service. 

Now, what the CO. had said in those ten 
minutes nobody ever knew, but Guns found 
a totally different kind of General awaiting 
him. 



AN AIR BARRAGE 135 

"Come in," he said, and after a pause a 
twinkle came in his eye as he looked at the 
dejected, hangdog air of the culprit. "H-m-m! 
You can thank your CO. and the excellent 
character he gives you, sir, for my agree- 
ing to drop this matter. I think you realise 
your offence and won't repeat it. Zeal and 
keenness is always commendable; but please 
temper it with discretion. I am glad to know 
of any officer keen on his work as I hear you 
are; but I cannot allow the matter to pass 
entirely without punishment ..." (Guns 
braced himself with a mental "Now for it.") 
" ... So I order you to parade at my Head- 
quarters at 7.30 to-night, and have dinner 
with me." He paused, said, "That'll do, 
sir," very abruptly, and Guns emerged in a 
somewhat dazed frame of mind. 

He said, after the dinner, that the punish- 
ment was much worse than it sounded. 
"Roasting! I never had such a dose of chaff- 
ing in my life. Those red-tabbed blighters 
. . . and they were all so infernally polite 
with it ... it was just beastly — all except 
the General. My Lord, he's a man, a proper 



136 FRONT LINES 

white man, a real brick. And he was as keen 
to know all about machine-guns as I am my- 
self.' ' 

"Well, you taught him something about 
them — especially about barrages and the re- 
sult of indirect fire," said the Mess, and, 
"Are you going to barrage the next Huns?" 

But on his next barrage plans, Guns in the 
first place — the very first and preliminary 
place — used a map, many diagrams, and end- 
less pages of notebooks in calculations on 
where his bullets would come down. 



VIII 

NIGHTMARE 

Jake Harding from early childhood had suf- 
fered from a horribly imaginative mind in 
the night hours, and had endured untold tor- 
tures from dreams and nightmares. One of 
his most frequent night terrors was to find 
himself fleeing over a dreary waste, strug- 
gling desperately to get along quickly and 
escape Something, while his feet and legs 
were clogged with dragging weights, and 
dreadful demons and bogies and bunyips 
howled in pursuit. This was an odd dream, 
because having been born and brought up 
in the bush he had never seen such a dreary 
waste as he dreamed of, and had never walked 
on anything worse than dry, springy turf or 
good firm road. There was one night he 
remembered for long years when he had a 
specially intensified edition of the same 
nightmare. It was when he was laid up as 

a child with a broken arm, and a touch of 
137 



138 FRONT LINES 

fever on top of it, and he went through all 
the usual items of dreary waste, clogged feet 
trying to run, nowling demons in pursuit, 
and a raging, consuming throat-drying fear. 
He woke screaming just as he was on the 
point of being seized and hurled into a yawn- 
ing furnace rilled with flaming red fire, saw a 
dim light burning by his bedside, felt a cool 
hand on his brow, heard a soothing voice 
murmur, "H-sh-sh! There's nothing to be 
afraid of. You're quite safe here. Go to 
sleep again." 

"I'm glad, Nursie," said Jake, "I'm glad 
I've waked up; I've had a drefful dream." 

All that is a long way back, but it serves 
to explain, perhaps, why Long Jake, 6ft. 3 in. 
in height, thin as a lath, but muscled ap- 
parently with whipcord and wire rope, known 
throughout the regiment as a "hard case," 
felt a curious and unaccountable jerk back to 
childhood in his memory as he lay on the 
edge of a wet shell-hole peering out into the 
growing grey light. "I've never been up 
here before," he thought wonderingly, "and 
I've never seen any bit of front like it. Yet I 



NIGHTMARE 139 

seem to know it by heart. " He knew after- 
wards, though not then, that it was 
the " dreary waste" of past dreams — a wide 
spreading welter of flat ground, broken and 
tumbled and torn and shiny wet, seen dimly 
through a misty haze, with nothing in sight 
but a few splintered bare poles of trees. 

But Long Jake did not get much time to 
cudgel his memory. It was ahnost time for 
the battalion to "go over the top," although 
here to be sure there was no top, and the 
going over merely meant their climbing out of 
the chain of wet shell-craters they occupied, 
and advancing across the flat and up the long 
slope. Both sides were shelling heavily, but 
the British, as Jake could judge, by far the 
heavier of the two. The noise was deafening. 
The thunder of the guns rose roaring and bel- 
lowing without an instant 's break. Overhead 
the shells howled and yelled and shrieked 
and whistled and rumbled in every conceiv- 
able tone and accent from the slow, lumbering 
moan and roll of a passing electric tram to 
the sharp rush of a great bird's wings. The 
ground quaked to the roll of the guns like jelly 



140 FRONT LINES 

in a shaken mould ; out in front of them the 
barrage was dropping into regular line, spout- 
ing in vivid flame that rent the twisting smoke 
veil quick instant after instant, flinging foun- 
tains of water and mud and smoke into the 
air. 

Jake heard no order given, did not even 
hear any whistle blown, but was suddenly 
aware that dim figures were rising out of the 
shell-holes to either side, and moving slowly 
forward. He scrambled out of his crater 
and moved forward in line with the rest. 
They went close up to the line of our burst- 
ing shells, so close that they could see the 
leaden hail splashing and whipping up the 
wet ground before them, so close that Jake 
more than once ducked instinctively at the 
vicious crack above his head of one of our 
own shells bursting and flinging its tearing 
bullets forward and down. But the line 
pressed on, and Jake kept level with it; and 
then, just when it seemed that they must 
come into that belt of leaping, splashing bul- 
lets, the barrage lifted forward, dropped 
again twenty or thirty yards ahead in another 



NIGHTMAEE 141 

wall of springing smokeclouds and spurting 
flame. 

Jake pushed on. It was terribly heavy 
going, and he sank ankle deep at every step 
in the soft, wet ground. It was hard, too, 
to keep straight on, because the whole surface 
was pitted and cratered with holes that ran 
from anything the size of a foot-bath to a 
chasm big enough to swallow a fair-sized 
house. Jake skirted the edges of the larger 
holes, and plunged in and struggled up out 
of the smaller ones. The going was so heavy, 
and it was so hard to keep direction, that for 
a long time he thought of nothing else. Then a 
man who had been advancing beside him 
turned to him and yelled something Jake 
could not hear, and next instant lurched stag- 
gering against him. Jake just caught a 
glimpse of the wild terror in the staring eyes, 
of the hand clutched about the throat, and 
the blood spurting and welling out between 
the clenched fingers, and then the man slid 
down in a heap at his feet. Jake stooped an 
instant with wild thoughts racing through his 
mind. What was he to do for the man? How 



142 FRONT LINES 

did one handle — couldn't stop bleeding by a 
tourniquet or even a tight bandage — choke 
the man that way — why'n blazes hadn't the 
ambulance classes told them how to handle a 
man with a bullet in his throat ? (The answer 
to that last, perhaps, if Jake had only known, 
being that usually the man is past handling or 
helping.) 

Then before Jake could attempt anything 
he knew the man was dead. Jake went on, 
and now he was conscious of vicious little 
hisses and whutts and sharp slaps and 
smacks in the wet ground about him, and 
knew these for bullets passing or striking 
close. 

The barrage lifted again, this time before 
they were well up on it, and the line ploughed 
on in pursuit of it. That was the third lift. 
Jake tried to recall how many times the pre- 
tended barrage had lifted in the practice at- 
tacks behind the lines, how many yards there 
were there from their own marked position 
to the taped-out lines representing the Ger- 
man positions. 

Then through the bellowing of the guns, 



NIGHTMARE 143 

the unceasing howl of the shells, the running 
crashes of their bursts Jake heard a sharp 
tat-tat-tat, another like an echo joining it, 
another and another until the whole blended 
in a hurrying clatter and swift running rattle. 
"Machine-guns," he gasped. "Now we're 
for it," but plunged on doggedly. He could 
see something dimly grey looming through 
the smoke haze, with red jets of fire sparkling 
and spitting from it . . . more spurting jets 
. . . and still more, both these last lots seen 
before he could make out the loom of the 
block-house shelters that covered them. Jake 
knew where he was now. These were the 
concrete redoubts, emplacements, "pill- 
boxes." But they were none of his business. 
Everyone had been carefully drilled in their 
own jobs ; there were the proper parties told 
off to deal with the pill-boxes; his business 
was to push straight on past them, clearing 
any Germans out of the shell-hole they might 
be holding, then stop and help dig some sort 
of linked-up line of holes, and stand by to 
beat off any counter-attack. So Jake went 
steadily on, looking sharply about him for 



144 FRONT LINES 

any Germans. A rifle flamed suddenly from 
a couple of yards ahead of him, and he felt 
the wind of the bullet by his face, thought 
for a moment he was blinded by the flash. 
But as he staggered back a bomber thrust 
past him and threw straight and hard into 
the shell-hole where the rifle had flashed. 
Jake saw a jumping sheet of flame, heard the 
crash of the bomb, felt the shower of dirt 
and wet flung from off the crater lip in his 
face, steadied himself, and plunged off after 
the hurrying bomber. 

The next bit was rather involved, and Jake 
was never sure exactly what happened. There 
were some grey figures in front of him, scur- 
rying to and fro confusedly, some with long 
coats flapping about their ankles, others with 
only half bodies or shoulders showing above 
the shell-hole edges. He thought some were 
holding their hands up ; but others — this was 
too clear to doubt — were shooting rapidly 
at him and the rest of the line, the red tongues 
of flame licking out from the rifles straight 
at them. Jake dived to a shell hole and be- 
gan firing back, felt somebody slide and 



NIGHTMARE 145 

scramble down beside him, turned to find the 
bomber picking himself up and shaking a 
blood-dripping left hand. "Come on, Jake," 
yelled the bomber. "Rush 'em's the game," 
and went scrambling and floundering out of 
the hole with Jake close at his heels. There 
was a minute's wild shooting and bombing, 
and the rest of the Germans either ran, or 
fell, or came crouching forward towards 
them with their empty hands high and wav- 
ing over their heads. 

An officer appeared suddenly from some- 
where. "Come along. Push on!" he was 
shouting. "Bit further before we make a 
line to hold. Push on," and he led the way 
forward at a staggering trot. Jake and the 
others followed. 

They reached the wide flattened crest of 
the slope they were attacking and were push- 
ing on over it when a rapid stutter of ma- 
chine-gun fire broke out on their left flank, 
and a stream of bullets came sheeting and 
whipping along the top of the slope. The 
line was fairly caught in the bullet-storm, 
and suffered heavily in the next minute. 



146 FRONT LINES 

There was some shooting from shell holes 
in front, too, but that was nothing to the 
galling fire that poured on them from the 
flank. Jake heard suddenly the long, in- 
sistent scream of a whistle, looked round and 
saw an officer signalling to take cover. He 
dropped promptly into a shell crater, and, 
hearing presently the bang of rifles round 
him, peered out over the edge for a mark to 
shoot at. Out to his left he caught sight of 
a sparkle of fire, and heard the rapid clatter 
of the machine-guns. He could just make 
out the rounded top of a buried concrete 
emplacement, and the black slit that marked 
the embrasure, and began to aim and fire 
steadily and carefully at it. The emplace- 
ment held its fire more now, but every now 
and then delivered a flickering string of 
flashes and a venomous rat-at-at-at. Jake 
kept on firing at it, glancing round every lit- 
tle while to be sure that the others were not 
moving on without him. The noisy banging 
raps of close-by machine-gunning broke out 
suddenly, and on Jake looking round from 
his shell hole he found a gun in action not 



NIGHTMARE 147 

more than a dozen yards away; and while 
he looked another one began to fire steadily 
from another shell crater fifty or sixty yards 
farther along. Jake crawled out of his hole, 
slithered over the rough ground and down 
into the crater where the nearest machine- 
gun banged rapidly. A sergeant was with 
the team, and Jake bawled in his ear, "If 
you'll keep pottin' at him every time he opens 
fire, I'll try'n sneak over an* out him with 
a bomb in the letter-box." 

"Please yerself," returned the sergeant. 
"My job's to keep pumpin' 'em down 'is 
throat every time 'e opens 'is mouth." 

"Watch you don't plug^e in mistake when 
I get there," said Jake, and crawled out of 
the hole. He ducked hastily into another as 
he heard the enemy bullets spatter about him, 
shift and begin to smack and splash about 
the gun he had just left. That gun ceased 
fire suddenly, but the one fifty yards farther 
round kept on furiously. "Got him in the 
neck, I s'pose," said Jake, "worse luck." 

He had a couple of Mills' bombs in his 
pockets, but added to his stock from a half- 



148 FRONT LINES 

empty bucket he found lying by a dead bomber 
in a crater. He advanced cautiously, wrig- 
gling hurriedly over the dividing ground be- 
tween craters, keeping down under cover as 
much as possible, working out and then si- 
dling in towards the red flashes that kept 
spurting out at intervals from the emplace- 
ment. Once it seemed that the enemy gun- 
ners had spotted him as he crawled and wrig- 
gled from one hole to another, and a gust 
of bullets came suddenly ripping and whip- 
ping about him as he hurled himself forward 
and plunged head foremost into a crater with 
his left side tingling and blood trickling from 
his left arm. He fingered the rent in his 
tunic and satisfied himself that the side 
wound was no more than a graze, the arm 
one a clean perforation which did not appear 
to have touched the bone. Twice after that 
he heard the bullets' swish-ish-ish sweeping 
over his head, or dropping to spatter the dirt 
flying from the edge of a hole he had reached. 
But he worked steadily on all the same, 
passed the line of the front and side em- 
brasures, and was pondering his next move, 



NIGHTMARE 149 

when a sudden rapid outburst of fire made 
him lift his head and peer out. A dozen men 
had appeared suddenly within twenty yards 
of the emplacement and were making as rapid 
a dash for it as the ground allowed. The 
machine-guns were hailing bullets at them 
as hard as they could fire, and man after 
man plunged and fell and rolled and squirmed 
into holes or lay still in the open. 

Jake did not wait to see the result of the 
dash. He was up and out of his cover and 
running in himself as fast as the wet ground 
would allow him. He was almost on the em- 
placement when a gun slewed round and 
banged a short burst at him. He felt the 
rush of bullets past his face, a pluck at his 
sleeve and shoulder strap, a blow on his 
shrapnel helmet, made a last desperate plunge 
forward, and scrambled on to the low roof. 
Hurriedly he pulled a bomb from his pocket 
and jerked the pin out, when a couple of 
rifles banged close behind them, a bullet 
whipped past overhead, and another smacked 
and ricochetted screaming from the concrete. 
Jake twisted, saw the head and shoulders of 



150 FRONT LINES 

two men with rifles levelled over a hole, and 
quick as a flash hurled his bomb. The men 
ducked, and Jake drew the pin from an- 
other bomb and lobbed it carefully over just 
as the first bomb burst. The other followed, 
exploding fairly in the hole and evidently 
deep down since the report was low and 
muffled. Jake pulled another pin, and was 
leaning over to locate an embrasure when 
the gun flamed out from it. Jake released 
the spring, counted carefully "One and two 

and three and " leaned over and slammed 

the bomb fairly into the slit. He had another 
bomb out as it burst — well inside by the 
sound of it — and this time leaned over and 
deliberately thrust it in through the opening. 
He had barely snatched his hand out when 
it went off with a muffled crash. Jake heard 
screams inside, and then an instant later 
loud calls behind him. He jerked round to 
see half a dozen arms waving from the hole 
where he had flung the first bomb. This, as 
he found after, was the underground stair 
down and up again into the emplacement, 



NIGHTMARE 151 

and the waving arms were in token of the 
garrison's surrender 

Jake stood on the roof and waved his arm, 
while keeping a cautious eye on the sur- 
renderee, saw the mud-daubed khaki figures 
rise from their holes and come scrambling 
forward, and sat down suddenly, feeling un- 
pleasantly faint and sickish. 

His officer's voice recalled him. "Well 
done, lad, well done. This cursed thing was 
fairly holding us up till you scuppered it. 
We've got our objective line now." 

Jake staggered to his feet. 

"You're wounded," went on the officer. 
"Get back out of this, and give a message 
to anyone that'll take it, that we've got our 
third objective line, and want supports and 
ammunition quick as possible. Go on, off 
with you, now." 

"Eight, sir!" said Jake with an effort, 
and started off back across the shell-torn 
ground again. 

He felt a bit dizzy still — side hurt a heap — 
arm getting numb, too — must keep going and 
get that message through 



152 FRONT LINES 

A high-explosive shrapnel burst directly 
overhead, and Jake heard several small pieces 
whip-down and one heavy hit splash thud- 
ding into the ground a yard from his feet. 
And this was only the first shell of many. 
The Germans had seen that their ground 
was lost, and were beginning to barrage it. 
Jake staggered blindly across the broken 
ground, in and out and round the craters, 
over sodden mounds that caught at his feet 
and crumbled wetly under his tread. Huge 
clods of wet earth clung to his feet and legs 
and made every step an effort. The shell 
fire was growing more and more intense, 
thundering and crashing and hurling cas- 
cades of mud and splinters in every direc- 
tion, passing overhead in long-drawn howls 
and moans and yellings, or the short savage 
screams and rush of the nearer passing. The 
ground was veiled in smoke and drifting 
haze, and stretched as far as he could see 
in a dreary perspective of shiny wet earth 
and ragged holes. He felt that he'd never 
cover it, never get clear of these cursed — 
what were they — shells, bogies, demons 



NIGHTMARE 153 

screaming and howling for his life. He 
plunged into a patch of low-lying ground, 
sticky swamp that sank him knee deep at 
every step, that clutched and clung about his 
feet and held each foot gripped as he dragged 
it sucking out and swung it forward. He 
wanted to run — run — run — but his legs were 
lead — and the bogies were very close — and 
now there were dead men amongst his feet — 
horribly mud-bedaubed dead, half-buried in 
the ooze — and helmets, and scattered packs, 
and haversacks. A festering* stench rose 
from the slime he waded through. He tried 
again to run, but could only stagger slowly, 
dragging one foot clear after the other. Once 
he trod on something he thought a lump of 
drier mud, and it squirmed weakly under his 
foot, and a white face twisted round and 
up, mouthing feeble curses at him. There 
were other things, horrible things he turned 
his eyes from as he tried to hurry past — 
and red stains on the frothy green scum. He 
reeled on, stupid and dazed, with the thun- 
derous crashes of a world shattering and 
dissolving about him, deafened by the demon 



154 FRONT LINES 

screeches and howlings. There were other 
people with him, some wandering aimlessly, 
others going direct the one way, meeting still 
others going the opposite, but all dragging 
clogged, weighted feet. Some fell and did 
not rise. Jake knew they had been caught. 
He saw two men who were carrying some- 
thing, a stretcher, stop and look up, and 
lower the stretcher hastily and drop, one flat 
on his face, the other crouched low and still 
looking up. A spurt of red flame flung a roll- 
ing cloud of black smoke about them, and 
seconds after a flattened steel helmet whis- 
tled down out of the sky and thudded in 
the mud by Jake. "When he came to where 
they had been there was only a hole with 
blue and grey reek curling slowly up its 
black calcined sides. Jake knew the three 
had been caught, too — as he would be caught, 
if he didn't hurry. He struggled, panting. 

They were still yelling and howling, look- 
ing for him. Demons, bogymen — and here 
was the loudest, and fiercest, the worst of 
them all — louder and louder to a tremendous 
chorus of all the noises devils ever made. 



NIGHTMARE 155 

He was flinging himself down to escape the 
demon clutch (thereby probably saving his 
life, since the great shell burst a bare score 
yards away) when he heard the thunderous 
clash of the furnace-doors flung back, caught 
a searing glimpse of the leaping red flames, 
and was hurled headlong. 

As he fell he tried to scream. He did 
scream, but — although he knew nothing of the 
gap, and thought it was on the instant of his 
falling — it was days later — a queer choking, 
strangled cry that brought a cool hand on 
his hot forehead, a quiet voice hushing and 
soothing him and saying he was "all right 
now. ' ' 

He opened his eyes and closed them again 
with a sigh of relief and content. A low 
light was burning by his bed, the shadowy 
figure of a woman bent over him, and between 
the opening and closing of his eyes, his mind 
flicked back to full fifteen years. 

"I'm glad I waked, Nursie," he said 
weakly. ' ' I 've had a drefful dream ; the very 
dreffulest I've ever had." 



IX 
THE GILDED STAFF 

A TALE OP THE OLD CONTEMPTIBLES 

Broadly speaking, the average regimental 
officer and man of the fighting units is firmly 
convinced beyond all argument that a ' ' Staff 
job" is an absolutely safe and completely 
cushy x one, that the Staff-wallah always has 
the best of food and drink, a good roof over 
him, and a soft bed to lie on, nothing to do 
except maybe sign his name to a few papers 
when he feels so inclined, and perhaps in a 
casual and comfortable chat after a good 
dinner decide on a tactical move, a strafe of 
some sort, issue the orders in a sort of brief 
''Take Hill 999" or "retire by Dead Cow 
Corner to Two Tree Trench" style, and leave 
the regiments concerned to carry on. Briefly, 
the opinion of the firing line might be summed 
up in a short Credo : 

1 Cushy — easy. 
156 



THE GILDED STAFF 157 

"I believe the Staff is No Good. 

"I believe the Staff has the cushiest of 
cushy jobs. 

"I believe the Staff never hears a bullet 
whistle or sees a shell burst except through 
a telescope. 

"I believe the Staff exists solely to find 
soft jobs for the wealthy and useless portion 
of the aristocracy. 

"I believe the Staff does nothing except 
wear a supercilious manner and red tabs and 
trimmings. 

"I believe the Staff is No Good." 

As to the average of correctness in this 
Credo I say nothing, but I can at least show 
that these things are not always thus. 

The Staff had been having what the Gen- 
eral's youthful and irrepressibly cheerful 
aide-de-camp called "a hectic three days." 
The Headquarters signallers had been going 
hard night and day until one of them was 
driven to remark bitterly as he straightened 
his bent back from over his instrument and 
waggled his stiffened fingers that had been 



158 FRONT LINES 

tapping the " buzzer" for hours on end, "I'm 
developin' a permanent hump on my back 
like a dog scrapin' a pot, an' if my fingers 
isn't to be wore off by inches I'll have to 
get the farrier to put a set of shoes on 'em." 
But the signallers had some advantages that 
the Staff hadn't, and one was that they could 
arrange spells of duty and at least have 
a certain time off for rest and sleep. The 
Staff Captain would have given a good deal 
for that privilege by about the third night. 
The worst of his job was that he had no 
time when he could be sure of a clear ten 
minutes' rest. He had messages brought to 
him as he devoured scratch meals; he was 
roused from such short sleeps as he could 
snatch lying fully dressed on a camp bed, 
by telephone and telegraph messages, or, still 
worse, by horrible scrawls badly written in 
faint pencillings that his weary eyes could 
barely decipher as he sat up on his bed with 
a pocket electric glaring on the paper; once 
he even had to abandon an attempt to shave, 
wipe the lather from his face, and hustle to 
impart some information to a waiting Gen- 



THE GILDED STAFF 159 

eral. A very hot fight was raging along that 
portion of front, and almost every report 
from the firing line contained many map ref- 
erences which necessitated so many huntings 
of obscure points on the maps that the mere 
reading and understanding of a message 
might take a full five or ten minutes; and 
in the same way the finding of regiments' 
positions for the General's information or 
the sending of orders added ten-fold to the 
map -hunting. 

The third day was about the most "hectic" 
of all. For the Captain it began before day- 
break with a call to the telephone which 
came just two hours after he had shuffled and 
shaken together the papers he had been 
working on without a break through the 
night, pulled off his boots, blown out his lamp, 
and dropped with a sigh of relief on his bed 
in a corner of the room. It was an urgent 
and personal call, and the first dozen words 
effectually drove the lingering sleep from the 
Captain's eyes and brain. "Yes, yes, 'heav- 
ily attacked,' I got that; go on . . . no, I 
don't think I need to refer to the map; I 



160 FRONT LINES 

very nearly know the beastly thing by heart 
now . . . yes . . . yes . . . Who? . . . killed 
outright . . . that's bad. . . . Who's in com- 
mand now then . . . right. The Dee and Don 
Trenches — wait a minute, which are they? 
Oh yes, I remember, south from the Pigsty 
and across to Stink Farm . . . right. I'll 
pass it on at once and let you know in five 
minutes . . . just repeat map references so 
I can make a note . . . yes . . . yes . . . yes 
. . . right . . . 'Bye." 

The urgency of the message, which told of 
a heavy and partially successful attack on the 
Divisional Front, wiped out any hope the 
Captain might have had of a return to his 
broken sleep. For the next two hours his 
mind was kept at full stretch reducing to 
elaborated details the comprehensive com- 
mands of the General, locating reserves and 
supports and Battalion H.Q.s, exchanging 
long messages with the Artillery, collecting 
figures of ammunition states, available 
strengths, casualty returns, collating and sift- 
ing them out, reshuffling them and offering 
them up to the Brigade Major or the Gen- 



THE GILDED STAFF 161 

eral, absorbing or distributing messages 
from and to concrete personalities or nebu- 
lous authorities known widely if vaguely 
as the D.A.A.G., D.A.Q.M.G., D.A.D.O.S., 
A.D.M.S., C.D.S., and T., and other strings 
of jumbled initials. 

He washed in the sparing dimensions of a 
canvas wash-stand, Field Service, x Pattern, 
deliberately taking off his coat and rolling up 
his shirt-sleeves, and firmly turning a deaf 
and soap-filled ear to the orderly who placed 
a ruled telephone message form on his table 
and announced it urgent. Afterwards he at- 
tended to the message, and talked into the 
telephone while his servant cleared one side 
of his table and served plentiful bacon, and 
eggs of an unknown period. Immediately 
after this a concentrated bombardment sud- 
denly developed on a ruined chateau some 
three or four hundred yards from the H.Q. 
farm. To the youthful aide-de-camp who had 
arrived from the outer dampness dripping 
water from every angle of a streaming mack- 
intosh he remarked wrathfully on the pros- 
pect of having to move once again in the 



162 FRONT LINES 

middle of such beastly waterfall weather. 
The aide stood at the brown-paper patched 
window, chuckling and watching the shells 
rewreck the already wrecked chateau. 
"Looks as if their spies had sold 'em a pup 
this time," he said gleefully. "I believe 
they must have been told we were in that old 
ruin instead of here. Or they were told 
this place and mistook it on the map for the 
chateau. Rather a lark — what!" 

" Confound the larks," said the Captain 
bitterly, "especially if they come any nearer 
this way. This place is quite leaky and 
draughty enough now without it getting any 
more shrap or splinter holes punched in it." 

Here the Captain had a short break from 
his inside job, leaving another officer to look 
after that and accompanying the General on 
horseback to a conference with various Briga- 
diers, Colonels, and Commanding Officers. 
The ride was too wet to be pleasant, and 
at no time could a better pace than a jog 
trot be made because on the road there was 
too much horse, foot, and wheeled traffic, 
and off the road in the swimming fields it 



THE GILDED STAFF 163 

took the horses all their time to keep their 
feet. 

The conference was held under the remain- 
ing quarter-roof of a shell-smashed farm, and 
the Captain listened and made notes in a 
damp book, afterwards accompanying the 
General on a ride round to where something 
could be seen of the position, and back to 
H.Q. Here, under the General's direction 
in consultation with the Brigade Major, he 
elaborated and extended his notes, drafted 
detailed directions for a number of minor 
moves next day, and translated them into 
terms of map-reference language, and a mul- 
titude of details Of roads to be followed by 
different units, billeting areas, rationing, and 
refilling points, and so on. 

He made a hasty, tinned lunch, and at the 
General's request set out to find one of the 
Battalion Headquarters and there meet some 
C.O.s and make clear to them certain points 
of the dispositions arranged. He went in a 
motor, sped on his way by the cheerful infor- 
mation of the aide that the town through 
which he must pass had been under "a deuce 



164 FRONT LINES 

of a hot fire" all day, had its streets full of 
Jack Johnson holes, and was in a continual 
state of blowinsr up, falling down, or being 
burnt out. "I was through there this morn- 
ing," said the aide, "and I tell you it was 
warmish. Sentry outside on the road wanted 
to stop me at first; said he'd orders to warn 
everybody it wasn't safe. Wasn't safe," re- 
peated the youth, chuckling, "Lord, after I'd 
been through there I'd have given that sentry 
any sort of a certificate of truthfulness. It 
was not safe." 

The Captain went off with his motor skat- 
ing from ditch to ditch down the greasy 
road. The guns were rumbling and banging 
up in front, and as the car bumped and slith- 
ered nearer to the town the Captain could 
hear the long yelling whistle and the deep 
rolling crashes of heavy shells falling some- 
where in it. He too was stopped at the out- 
skirts by a sentry who held up his hand to 
the driver, and then came and parleyed with 
the Captain through the window. The Cap- 
tain impatiently cut his warning short. There 
was no other road that would take him near 



THE GILDED STAFF 165 

the point lie desired to reach; he must go 
through the town ; he must ride since he could 
not spare time to walk. He climbed out and 
mounted beside the driver, with some instinc- 
tive and vaguely formed ideas in his mind 
that if the driver were hit he might have 
to take the wheel, that the car might be upset 
and pin him underneath, that he might be 
able to assist in picking a course through rub- 
bish and shell-holes, to jump out and clear 
any slight obstruction from in front of the 
wheels. The car ran on slowly into the town. 
Decidedly the aide had been right, except that 
"warmish" was a mild word for the state 
of affairs. The Germans were flinging shells 
into the town as if they meant to destroy 
it utterly. The main street through was lit- 
tered with bricks and tiles and broken fur- 
niture ; dead horses were sprawled in it, some 
limp and new killed with the blood still run- 
ning from their wounds, others with their 
four legs sticking out post-stiff in the air; 
in several places there were broken-down 
carts, in one place a regular mass of them 
piled up and locked in a confused tangle of 



166 FRONT LINES 

broken wheels, splintered shafts, cut harness, 
and smashed woodwork, their contents spilled 
out anyhow and mixed up inextricably with 
the wreckage. 

There was not much traffic in the main 
street, and such as was there was evidently, 
like the Captain himself, only there because 
no other road offered. There were half a 
dozen artillery ammunition waggons, a few 
infantry transport carts, several Army Serv- 
ice Corps vehicles. All of them were moving 
at a trot, the waggons rumbling and lum- 
bering heavily and noisily over the cobble- 
stones, the drivers stooped forward and peer- 
ing out anxiously to pick a way between the 
obstacles in their path. The shells were 
coming over continuously, moaning and 
howling and yelling, falling with tearing 
crashes amongst the houses, blowing them 
wall from wall, slicing corners off or cutting 
a complete top or end away, breaking them 
down in rattling cascades of tiles and bricks, 
bursting them open and flinging them high 
and far upwards and outwards in flying frag- 
ments. As the car crawled cautiously through 



THE GILDED STAFF 167 

the debris that littered the street, pieces of 
brick and mortar, whole or broken slates, 
chips of wood and stone, pattered and rapped 
constantly down about and on the car; the 
wheels crunched and ground on splintered 
glass from the gaping windows. A shell 
roared down on the street ahead of them, 
burst thunderously in a vivid sheet of flame 
and spurting black cloud of smoke, an appall- 
ing crash that rolled and reverberated loud 
and long up and down the narrow street. 
"Go easy," cautioned the Captain as the 
black blinding reek came swirling down to 
meet them, ''or you'll run into the hole that 
fellow made." The driver's face was set 
and white, and his hands gripped tight on 
the wheel; the Captain had a sudden com- 
punction that he had brought him, that he 
had not left the car outside the town and 
walked through. They edged carefully past 
the yawning shell-crater with the smoke still 
clinging and curling up from its edges, and, 
free of the smoke again, saw a fairly clear 
stretch ahead of them. The Captain heard 
the thin but rising whistle of another heavy 



168 FRONT LINES 

shell approaching, and "Open her out," he 
said quickly, ' ' and let her rip. ' ' The driver, 
he noticed, for all his white face had his 
nerves well under control, and steadily 
caught the change of gear on the proper in- 
stant, speeded up sharply but quite smoothly. 
The car swooped down the clear stretch, the 
roar of the shell growing louder and closer, 
and just as they reached and crammed the 
brakes on to take the corner, they heard the 
shell crash down behind them. The Captain 
leaned out and looked back, and had a mo- 
mentary glimpse of a house on the street 
spouting black smoke, dissolving and cascad- 
ing down and out across the road in a torrent 
of bricks and wreckage. In another two min- 
utes they shot out clear of the town. A mile 
farther on a soldier warned them that the 
cross-roads were practically impassable, the 
roadway being broken and churned up by 
the heavy shells that all afternoon had been 
and were still at intervals falling upon it. 
So the Captain left the car and went on a-foot. 
He was nearly caught at the cross-roads, a 
shell fragment ripping a huge rent in his 



THE GILDED STAFF 169 

mackintosh just over his ribs. Before he 
reached the communication trenches too he 
had a highly uncomfortable minute with light 
high-explosive shells bursting round him 
while he crouched low in a muddy shell-crater. 
He reached the meeting-place at last, and 
spent an hour talking over plans and move- 
ments, and by the time he was ready to start 
back it w?s rapidly growing dark. It was 
completely dark before he found his way 
back to the road again, stumbling over the 
shell-holed ground, slipping and floundering 
through the mud, tripping once and falling 
heavily over some strands of barbed wire. 
When he found the car again he was so dirty 
and draggled and dishevelled and ragged — 
the barbed wire had taken the cap from his 
head and dropped it in a mud puddle, and left 
another tear or two in his mackintosh — so 
smeared and plastered with mud, that his 
driver at first failed to recognise him. In 
the town he found parties of the Sappers 
filling up the worst of the shell-holes and 
clearing away the debris that blocked the road 
where he had seen the house blown down, 



170 FRONT LINES 

while the shells still screamed up and burst 
clattering over and amongst the houses, and 
bullets and splinters whistled and sang over- 
head, clashed and rattled on the causeway. 

He slept snatchily through the rest of the 
journey, waking many times as the car 
bumped badly, and once, when it dropped 
heavily into a shell-hole and bounced out 
again, flinging him bodily upwards until 
his head and shoulder banged solidly against 
the roof, taking half a minute to regain 
his scattered wits and dissipate a wild dream 
that the car had been fairly hit by a shell. 

And when at last he reached H.Q., crawled 
wearily out of the car, and staggered, half 
asleep and utterly worn out, into his room, 
he found there the other officer he had left 
to handle his work and the youthful aide 
humped over the table copying out reports. 

"Hullo," said the senior, "you're late. I 
say, you do look tucked up." 

The Captain grunted. "Not more'n I 
feel, ' ' he said, blinking at the light. ' ' Thank 
the Lord my job's over and everything fixed 
and ready so far's this end goes." 



THE GILDED STAFF 171 

"You've heard, I suppose!" said the other. 
"No? Baddish news. Our left has cracked 
and the Germ has a slice of their trenches. 
It upsets all our plans, and we've got 'em 
all to make over again." 

The Captain stared blankly at him. "All 
to make . . . that means all to-day's work 
to begin and go through again. All to-day's 
work — well, I'm . . ." 

The aide had been eyeing the mud-bedaubed 
figure with water dripping from the torn coat, 
the sopping cap dangling in the dirty hand, 
the blue unshaven chin and red-rimmed eyes. 
He giggled suddenly. ' ' I say, you know what 
the troops call the Staff?" He spluttered 
laughter. ' ' The Gilded Staff, ' ' he said, point- 
ing at the Captain. ' ' Behold — oh, my aunt — 
behold the Gilded Staff," 



A EAID 

Foe several days our artillery had been bom- 
barding stretches of the front German 
trenches and cutting the wire entanglements 
out in front of them preparatory to a big 
attack. The point actually selected for the 
raid was treated exactly the same as a score 
of other points up and down the line. By 
day the guns poured a torrent of shrapnel 
on the barbed wire, tearing it to pieces, up- 
rooting the stakes, cutting wide swathes 
through it. Because the opposing lines were 
fairly close together, our shells, in order to 
burst accurately amongst and close over the 
wire, had to skim close over our own parapet, 
and all day long the Forward Officers 
crouched in the front trench, observing and 
correcting the fall of their shells that shrieked 
close over them with an appalling rush of 
savage sound. And while they busied them- 

172 



A RAID 173 

selves on the wire, the howitzers and heav- 
ier guns methodically pounded the front-line 
trench, the support and communication 
trenches, and the ground behind them. At 
night the tempest might slacken at intervals, 
but it never actually ceased. The guns, care- 
fully laid on "registered" lines and ranges 
during the day, continued to shoot with ab- 
solute accuracy during the darkness — al- 
though perhaps "darkness" is a misleading 
term where the No Man's Land glowed with 
light and flickered with dancing shadows 
from the stream of flares that tossed con- 
stantly into the air, soaring and floating, 
sinking and falling in balls of vivid light. 
If no lights were flung up for a period from 
the German line, our front line fired Verey 
pistol lights, swept the opposing trench and 
wire with gusts of shrapnel and a spattering 
hail of machine-gun bullets to prevent any 
attempt on the enemy's part to creep out and 
repair their shattered defences. 

Our bombardment had not been carried 
out unmolested. The German gunners 
"crumped" the front and support lines stead- 



174 FRONT LINES 

ily and systematically, searched the ground 
behind, and sought to silence the destroying 
guns by careful " counter-battery" work. 
But all their efforts could not give pause to 
our artillery, much less silence it, and the 
bombardment raged on by day and night for 
miles up and down the line. It was necessary 
to spread the damage, because only by doing 
so, only by threatening a score of points, was 
it possible to mislead the enemy and prevent 
them calculating where the actual raid was 
to be made. 

The hour chosen for the raid was just about 
dusk. There was no extra-special prepara- 
tion immediately before it. The guns con- 
tinued to pour in their fire, speeding it up a 
little, perhaps, but no more than they had 
done a score of times in the past twenty- 
four hours. The infantry clambered out of 
their trench and filed out through the nar- 
row openings in their own wire entangle- 
ments, with the shells rushing and crashing 
over them so close that instinctively they 
crouched low to give them clearance. Out 
in front, and a hundred yards away, the 



A RAID 175 

ground was hidden and indistinct under the 
pall of smoke that curled and eddied from 
the bursting shrapnel, only lit by sharp, 
quick-vanishing glare after glare as the 
shells burst. In the trench the infantry had 
just left, a Forward Officer peered out over 
the parapet, fingered his trench telephone, 
glanced at the watch on his wrist, spoke an 
occasional word to his battery checking the 
flying seconds, and timing the exact moment 
to "lift." 

Out in front a faint whistle cut across 
the roar of fire. "They're off," said the 
Forward Officer into his 'phone, and a mo- 
ment later a distinct change in the note of 
sound of the overhead shells told that the 
fire had lifted, that the shells were passing 
higher above his head, to fall farther back 
in the enemy trenches and leave clear the 
stretch into which the infantry would soon 
be pushing. 

For a minute or two there was no change 
in the sound of battle. The thunder of the 
guns continued steadily, a burst of rifle or 
machine-gun fire crackled spasmodically. 



176 FRONT LINES 

Over the open No Man's Land the infantry 
pressed rapidly as the broken ground would 
allow, pressed on in silence, crouching and 
dodging over and amongst the shell-holes and 
craters. Four German " crumps" roared 
down and past, bursting with shattering 
roars behind them. A group of light l ' Whizz- 
bang" shells rushed and smashed overhead, 
and somewhere out on the flank an enemy 
machine-gun burst into a rapid stutter of 
fire, and its bullets sang whistling and whip- 
ping about the advancing line. Men gulped 
in their throats or drew long breaths of ap- 
prehension that this was the beginning of 
discovery of their presence in the open, the 
first of the storm they knew would quickly 
follow. But there were no more shells for 
the moment, and the rattle of machine-gun 
fire diminished and the bullets piped thinner 
and more distant as the gun muzzle swept 
round. The infantry hurried on, thankful 
for every yard made in safety, knowing that 
every such yard improved their chance of 
reaching the opposing trench, of the raid be- 
ing successfully accomplished. 



A RAID 177 

Now they were half-way across, and still 
they were undiscovered. But of a sudden a 
rifle spat fire through the curling smoke; a 
machine-gun whirred, stopped, broke out 
again in rapid and prolonged fire. From 
somewhere close behind the German line a 
rocket soared high and burst in a shower of 
sparks. There was a pause while the ad- 
vancing men hurried on, stumbling forward 
in silence. Another rocket leaped, and be- 
fore its sparks broke downward the German 
guns burst into a deluge of fire. They swept 
not only the open ground and trenches where 
the raiders were attacking, but far up and 
down the line. Eocket after rocket whizzed 
up, and to right and left the guns answered 
with a fire barrage on thej British front 
trench and open ground. 

But at the attacking point the infantry 
were almost across when the storm burst, 
and the shells for the most part struck down 
harmlessly behind them. The men were into 
the fragments of broken wire, and the shat- 
tered parapet loomed up under their hands 
a minute after the first shell burst. Up to 



178 FRONT LINES 

this they had advanced in silence, but now 
they gave tongue and with wild yells leaped 
at the low parapet, scrambled over and down 
into the trench. Behind them a few forms 
twisted and sprawled on the broken ground, 
but they were no sooner down than running 
stretcher-bearers pounced on them, lifted and 
bore them back to the shelter of their own 
lines. The men with the stretchers paid no 
more heed to the pattering shrapnel, the rush 
and crack of the shells, the hiss and whistle 
of bullets, than if these things had been 
merely a summer shower of rain. 

In the German trench the raiders worked 
and fought at desperate speed, but smoothly 
and on what was clearly a settled and re- 
hearsed plan. There were few Germans to 
be seen and most of these crouched dazed and 
helpless, with hands over their heads. They 
were promptly seized, bundled over the par- 
apet, and told by word or gesture to be off. 
They waited for no second bidding, but ran 
with heads stooped and hands above their 
heads straight to the British line, one or 
two men doubling after them as guards. 



A RAID 179 

Some of the prisoners were struck down by 
their own guns' shell-fire, and these were 
just as promptly grabbed by the stretcher- 
bearers and hurried in under cover. Where 
any Germans clung to their weapons and at- 
tempted to resist the raiders, they were shot 
down or rushed with the bayonet. Little par- 
ties of British sought the communication 
ways leading back to the support trenches, 
forced a way down, hurling grenades over as 
they advanced, halted at suitable spots, and, 
pulling down sandbags or anything available 
to block the way, took their stand and beat 
back with showers of bombs any appearance 
of a rush to oust them. 

Up and down the selected area of front- 
line trench the raiders spread rapidly. There 
were several dug-outs under the parapet, and 
from some of these grey-coated figures 
crawled with their hands up on the first sum- 
mons to surrender. These too were bundled 
over the parapet. If a shot came from the 
black mouth of the dug-out in answer to the 
call to surrender, it was promptly bombed. 
At either end of the area of front line marked 



180 FRONT LINES 

out as the limits of the raid, strong parties 
made a block and beat off the feeble attacks 
that were made on them. There was little 
rifle or bayonet work. Bombs played the 
principal part, and the trench shook to their 
rapid re-echoing clashes, flamed and flared 
to their bursts of fire, while overhead the 
British shells still rushed and dropped a roar- 
ing barrage of fire beyond the raided area. 

In five minutes all sign of resistance had 
been stamped out, except at one of the com- 
munication-way entrances and at one end of 
the blocked front line. At both of these 
points the counter-attack was growing 
stronger and more pressing. At the com- 
munication trench it was beaten back by 
sheer weight of bombing, but at the trench 
end, where heavy shells had smashed in the 
walls, and so rendered the fighting less con- 
fined to a direct attack, the defenders of 
the point were assailed from the German 
second line, man after man fell fighting 
fiercely, and there looked to be a danger 
of the whole trench being flooded by the 
counter-attack. The prompt action of a 



A RAID 181 

young officer saved the situation. It had 
been no plan of the raid to touch the sup- 
port or second trench, but, ignoring this un- 
derstanding, the officer gathered a handful 
of men, climbed from the front trench, and 
dashed across the open to the second one. 
His party pelted the counter-attackers mass- 
ing there with as many bombs as they could 
fling in a few seconds, turned and scrambled 
back to the front line, and fell into the scuffle 
raging there in a vigorous butt-and-bayonet 
onslaught. 

But now it was time to go. The object 
of the raid had been carried out, and it was 
risking all for nothing to wait a moment 
longer. The word was passed, and half the 
men climbed out and ran for their own line. 
A minute later the remainder followed them, 
carrying the last of their wounded. An offi- 
cer and two or three men left last, after 
touching off the fuses connected up with 
charges placed in the first instance in their 
duly selected places. 

A moment later, with a muffled report, a 
broad sheet of fire flamed upward from the 



182 FRONT LINES 

trench. Three other explosions followed on 
the heels of the first, and a shower of earth 
and stones fell rattling about the ground and 
on the shrapnel-helmets of the retiring raid- 
ers, and the earth shuddered under their 
feet. The German gunners slackened and 
ceased their fire, probably waiting to hear 
from the front what this new development 
meant, or merely checking instinctively at 
the sight and sound. For a moment the shells 
ceased to crash over the open ground, the 
raiders took advantage of the pause, and 
with a rush were back and over their own 
parapet again. 

Over their heads the British shells still 
poured shrieking and crashing without pause 
as they had done throughout. 

In military phraseology the raid had been 
entirely successful, a score of prisoners being 
taken, a stretch of trench completely de- 
stroyed, and few casualties sustained. The 
raiders themselves summed it up in words 
more terse but meaning the same — "a good 
bag, and cheap at the price." 



XI 

A ROARING TRADE 

The "O.C. Dump," a young Second Lieu- 
tenant of Artillery, thumped the receiver 
down disgustedly on the telephone and made 
a few brief but pungent remarks on railways 
and all connected therewith. 

" What's the trouble, Vickers?" said a 
voice at the door, and the Lieutenant wheeled 
to find the Colonel commanding the Ammu- 
nition Column and the dump standing just 
inside. 

"I was just going to look for you, sir," 
said Vickers. "They've cut our line again — 
put two or three heavy shells into that bit 
of an embankment a mile or so from here, 
and blown it to glory evidently." 

"I don't suppose the Engineers will take 
long to repair that," said the Colonel. "They 
can slap down the metals and sleepers quick 
enough if the embankment isn't smashed." 

183 



184 FRONT LINES 

1 ' But it is, sir, ' ' said Vickers. ' ' I was just 
talking to Division, and they say the trains 
won't run in to-night, and that supplies will 
come up by lorry. And we've some heavy 
lots due in to-night," he concluded despair- 
ingly. 

1 'Let's see," said the Colonel, and for five 
minutes listened and scribbled figures while 
Vickers turned over notes and indents and 
'phone messages and read them out. 

"Yes," said the Colonel reflectively, when 
they had finished. "It'll be a pretty heavy 
job. But you can put it through all right, 
Vickers," he went on cheerfully. "It won't 
be as bad as that bit you pulled off the first 
week on the Somme. I'll leave it to you, 
but I'll be round somewhere if you should 
want me. When will the first of the lorries 
come along?" 

They talked a few minutes longer, and then 
the Colonel moved to the door. The ' ' office ' ' 
was a square shanty built of empty ammu- 
nition boxes, with a tarpaulin spread over 
for a roof. It was furnished with a roughly- 
built deal table, littered with papers held in 



A ROARING TRADE 185 

clips, stuck on files, or piled in heaps, seats 
made of 18-pounder boxes, a truckle-bed and 
blankets in one corner, a telephone on a 
shelf beside the table. Light and ventilation 
were provided by the leaving-out of odd boxes 
here and there in the building up of the walls, 
and by a wide doorway without a door to it. 
The whole thing was light and airy enough, 
but, because it was one of the hot spells of 
summer, it was warm enough inside to be 
uncomfortable. Everything in the place — 
table, papers, bed, seats — was gritty to the 
touch and thick with dust. 

The two men stood in the doorway a min- 
ute, looking out on the depleted stacks of am- 
munition boxes piled in a long curving row 
beside the roadway that ran in off the main 
road, swung round, and out on to it again. 
A few men were working amongst the boxes, 
their coats off and their grey shirt sleeves 
rolled up, and a stream of traffic ran steadily 
past on the main road. 

1 ' Pretty quiet here now, ' ' said the Colonel. 
"But, by the sound of it, things are moving 



186 FRONT LINES 

brisk enough up there. You'll get your turn 
presently, I expect." 

"I expect so, sir," said the Lieutenant; 
"especially if the yarn is true that we push 
'em again at daybreak to-morrow. ' ' 

1 'Come over and get your tea before the 
lorries come in, if you've time," said the 
Colonel, and moved off. 

The Lieutenant stood a moment longer lis- 
tening to the steady roll and vibrating rum- 
ble of the guns up in the line, and then, at a 
sharp birr-r-r from the telephone, turned 
sharply into the office. 

The lorries began to arrive just after 
sunset, rumbling up the main road and swing- 
ing off in batches as there was room for them 
in the curved crescent of track that ran 
through the dump and back to the main road. 
As quickly as they were brought into position 
the dump working party jerked off the tail- 
boards and fell to hauling the boxes of shell 
out and piling them in neat stacks along a 
low platform which ran by the edge of the 
dump track. The dump was a distributing 
centre mainly for field artillery, so that the 



A ROARING TRADE 187 

shells were 18-pounder and 4*5 howitzer, in 
boxes just comfortably large enough for a 
man to lift and heave about. As the light 
failed and the darkness crept down, candle 
lamps began to appear, flitting about amongst 
the piled boxes, dodging in and out between 
the lorries, swinging down the track to guide 
the drivers and show them the way in one 
by one. Vickers and the Army Service Corps 
officer in charge of the M.T. lorries stood on 
a stack of boxes midway round the curve, 
or moved about amongst the workers direct- 
ing and hastening the work. 

But about an hour after dark there came 
some hasteners a good deal more urgent and 
effective than the officers. All afternoon and 
early evening a number of shells had been 
coming over and falling somewhere out from 
the dump, but the faintness of their whistle 
and sigh, and the dull thump of their burst, 
told that they were far enough off not to be 
worth worrying about. But now there came 
the ominous shriek, rising into a louder but 
a fuller and deeper note, that told of a shell 
dropping dangerously near the listeners. As 



188 FRONT LINES 

the shriek rose to a bellowing, vibrating roar, 
the workers amongst the boxes ducked and 
ran in to crouch beside or under the lorries, 
or flatten themselves close up against the 
piles of ammunition. At the last second, 
when every man was holding his breath, and 
it seemed that the shell was on the point of 
falling fairly on top of them, they heard the 
deafening roar change and diminish ever so 
slightly, and next instant the shell fell with 
an earth-shaking crash just beyond the dump 
and the main road. Some of the splinters sang 
and hummed overhead, and the workers were 
just straightening from their crouched posi- 
tions and turning to remark to one another, 
when again there came to them the same 
rising whistle and shriek of an approaching 
shell. But this time, before they could duck 
back, the voice of the "O.C. Dump," mag- 
nified grotesquely through a megaphone, bel- 
lowed at them, "Gas masks at alert position 
every man. Sharp now." 

A good many of the men had stripped off 
gas masks and coats, because the masks 
swinging and bobbing about them were awk- 



A ROARING TRADE 189 

ward to work in, and the night was close 
and heavy enough to call for as little ham- 
pering clothing as possible in the job of 
heaving and hauling heavy boxes about. 

A word from Vickers to the A.S.C. officer 
explained his shout. "If one of those shells 
splashes down on top of that stack of gas- 
shells of ours, this won 't be a healthy locality 
without a mask on." The men must have 
understood or remembered the possibility, 
because, heedless of the roar of the approach- 
ing shell, they grabbed hastily for their 
masks and hitched them close and high on 
their chests, or ran to where they had hung 
them with their discarded tunics, and slung 
them hastily over shoulder, and ready. 

The second shell fell short of the dump 
with another thunderous bang and following 
shrieks of flying splinters. Close after it 
came the voice of Vickers through his mega- 
phone shouting at the workers to get a move 
on, get on with the job. And partly because 
of his order, and partly, perhaps, because 
they could see him in the faint light of the 
lantern he carried standing man-high and 



190 FRONT LINES 

exposed on top of the highest stack of boxes, 
and so absorbed some of that mysterious con- 
fidence which passes from the apparent ease 
of an officer to his men in time of danger, they 
fell to work again energetically, hauling out 
and stacking the boxes. Another half-dozen 
shells fell at regular intervals, and although 
all were uncomfortably close, none actually 
touched the dump. One man, an A.S.C. mo- 
tor-driver, was wounded by a flying splinter, 
and was half -led, half-carried out from the 
dump streaming with blood. 

"Ain't you glad, Bill," said another A.S.C. 
driver, as the group passed his lorry, "that 
we're in this Army Safety Corps'?" 1 

1 « Not 'arf , ' ' said Bill. < ' There 's sich a fat 
lot o' safety about it. Hark at that. . . . 
Here she comes again." 

This time the shell found its mark. The 
crash of its fall was blended with and followed 
by the rending and splintering of wood, a 
scream and a yell, and a turmoil of shout- 
ing voices. The dump officer bent down and 

1 A derisive nickname bestowed by other troops on the 
A.S.C. 



A SOARING TRADE 191 

shouted to the A.S.C. officer below him : "In 
the road . . . amongst your lorries, I fancy. 
You'd better go'n look to it. I'll keep 'em 
moving here." 

The A.S.C. man went off at the double 
without a word. He found that the shell had 
fallen just beside one of the loaded lorries 
which waited their turn to pull in to the 
dump, splitting and splintering it to pieces, 
lifting and hurling it almost clear of the 
road. Some of the ammunition boxes had 
been flung off. The officer collected some of 
his M.T. drivers and a few spare men, emp- 
tied the smashed lorry, and picked up the 
scattered boxes and slung them aboard other 
lorries; and then, without giving the men 
time to pause, set them at work heaving and, 
hauling and levering the broken lorry clear 
of the road, and down a little six-foot sloping 
bank at the roadside. Another shell came 
down while they worked, but at their instinc- 
tive check the officer sprang to help, shout- 
ing at them, and urging them on. "Get to 
it. Come along. D'you want to be here 
all night? We have to off-load all this lot 



192 FRONT LINES 

before we pull out. I don't want to wait 
here having my lorries smashed up, if you 
do. Come along now — all together." The 
men laughed a little amongst themselves, and 
came "all together," and laughed again and 
gave little ironical cheers as the wrecked 
lorry slid and swayed and rolled lurching 
over the bank and clear of the road. The 
officer was running back to the dump when 
he heard the officer there bellowing for an- 
other six lorries to pull in. He climbed to 
the step of one as it rolled in, dropped off 
as it halted, and hurried over to the officer 
in charge. 

"Hark at 'em," said Vickers, as another 
shell howled over, and burst noisily a hun- 
dred yards clear. "They're laying for us all 
right this trip. Pray the Lord they don't 
lob one into this pile — the gas-shells espe- 
cially. That would fairly hang up the job; 
and there are Heaven knows how many bat- 
teries waiting to send in their waggons for 
the stuff now." 

"They got my lorry," said the A.S.C. man. 
"Wrecked it and killed the driver." 



A ROARING TRADE 193 

"Hard luck," said Vickers. "Hasn't 
blocked the road, I hope?" 

"No; spilt the shells all over the place, 
but didn't explode any. We cleared the 
road." 

"Don't forget," said Vickers anxiously, 
"to tell me if there's any of the load miss- 
ing. It'll tie me up in my figures abomin- 
ably if you deliver any short." He broke 
off to shout at the men below, "Get along 
there. Move out those empty ones. Come 
along, another six. Pass the word for an- 
other six, there." 

The shelling eased off for a couple of hours 
after that, and by then the last of the lorries 
had gone, and their place in the road outside 
and along the dump track had been taken by 
long lines of ammunition waggons from the 
batteries and the Divisional Ammunition 
Column. Every officer or N.C.O. who came in 
charge of a batch brought in the same im- 
perative orders — to waste no minute, to load 
up, and to get to the gun line at the earliest 
possible moment, that action was brisk, and 
the rounds were wanted urgently. There 



194 FRONT LINES 

was no need to report that action was brisk, 
because the dump was quite near enough 
to the line for the steady, unbroken roar 
of gunfire, to tell its own tale. The sound 
of the field guns in the advanced positions 
came beating back in the long, throbbing roll 
of drum-fire, and closer to the dump, to both 
sides of it, in front and rear of it, the sharp, 
ear-splitting reports of the heavies crashed 
at quick intervals. The dump was the centre 
of a whirlwind of activity. The ammunition 
waggons came rumbling and bumping in 
round the curved track, the drivers steering 
in their six-horse teams neatly and cleverly, 
swinging and halting them so that the tail 
of each waggon was turned partly in to the 
piled boxes, and the teams edged slanting 
out across the road. The moment one halted 
the drivers jumped down from the saddles, 
the lead driver standing to his horses ' heads, 
the centre and wheel running to help with the 
work of wrenching open the ammunkion 
boxes and cramming the shells into the 
pigeon-hole compartments of the waggons. 
The instant a waggon was filled the drivers 



A ROARING TRADE 195 

mounted and the team pulled out to make way 
for another. 

The lanterns perched on vantage points on 
the piles of boxes or swinging to and fro 
amongst the teams revealed dimly and patch- 
ily a scene of apparent confusion, of jerking 
and swaying shadows, quick glints of light on 
metal helmets and harness buckles and wheel 
tyres, the tossing, bobbing heads of animals, 
the rounded, shadowy bulk of their bodies, 
the hurriedly moving figures of the men 
stooping over the boxes, snatching out the 
gleaming brass and grey steel shells, tossing 
empty boxes aside, hauling down fresh ones 
from the pile. Here and there a wet, sweat- 
ing face or a pair of bared arms caught the 
light of a lantern, stood out vividly for a 
moment, and vanished again into the shad- 
owed obscurity, or a pair or two of legs were 
outlined black against the light, and cast dis- 
torted wheeling shadows on the circle of 
lamp-lit ground. A dim, shifting veil of dust 
hung over everything, billowing up into thick 
clouds under the churning hoofs and wheels 



196 FRONT LINES 

as the teams moved in and out, settling slowly 
and hanging heavily as they halted and stood. 

The dim white pile of boxes that were 
walled round the curve was diminishing rap- 
idly under the strenuous labour of the drivers 
and working party; the string of teams and 
waggons in the road outside kept moving up 
steadily, passing into the dump, loading up, 
moving out again, and away. Vickers, the 
officer in charge, was here, there, and every- 
where, clambering on the boxes to watch the 
work, shouting directions and orders, down 
again, and hurrying into the office shanty 
to grab the telephone and talk hurriedly into 
it, turning to consult requisition "chits" for 
different kinds of shells, making hurried cal- 
culations and scribbling figures, out again to 
push in amongst the workers, and urge them 
to hurry, hurry, hurry. 

Once he ran back to the office to find the 
Colonel standing there. "Hullo, Vickers," 
he said cheerfully. "Doing a roaring trade 
to-night, aren't you?" 

"I just am, sir," said Vickers, wiping his 



A ROARING TRADE 197 

wet forehead. ' ' I '11 be out of Beer-Ex 1 pres- 
ently if they keep on rushing me for it at 
this rate." 

' ' Noisy brute of a gun that, ' ' said the Colo- 
nel, as a heavy piece behind them crashed 
sharply, and the shell roared away overhead 
in diminishing howls and moans. 

" And here's one coming the wrong way," 
said Vickers hurriedly. "Hope they're not 
going to start pitching 'em in here again. ' ' 

But his hopes were disappointed. The Ger- 
man gun or guns commenced another regu- 
lar bombardment of and round the dump. 
Shell after shell whooped over, and dropped 
with heavy rolling c-r-r-umps on the ground, 
dangerously near to the piled boxes. Then 
one fell fairly on top of a pile of shells with 
an appalling crash and rending, splintering 
clatter, a spouting gush of evil-smelling black 
smoke, and clouds of blinding dust. The pile 
hit was flung helter-skelter, the boxes crash- 
ing and shattering as they fell and struck 
heavily on the ground, the loose shells whirl- 

1 Telephone language for Bx — the technical name for cer- 
tain sheila. 



198 FRONT LINES 

ing up and out from the explosion, and 
thumping and thudding on the other piles or 
in the dust. 

At first sound of the burst, or, in fact, a 
second or so before it, the dump officer was 
yelling at the pitch of his voice, over and 
over again, "Gas masks on — gas masks on"; 
and before the ripping and splintering crashes 
had well finished he was running hard to the 
spot where the shell had fallen. He freed 
his own mask as he ran, and slipped it over 
his face, but even before he had pushed into 
the drifting reek of the burst he had snatched 
it off, and was turning back, when he found 
the Colonel on his heels. 

"I was afraid of those gas-shells of ours, 
sir," he said hurriedly. "Pretty near 'em, 
but they're all right, and nothing's afire, evi- 
dently." 

"Good enough," said the Colonel quietly. 
"Better hurry the men at the job again." 

"Masks off," shouted Vickers. "All right 
here. Masks off, and get on with it, men." 

The working party and the drivers 
snatched their masks off, and before the dust 



A ROARING TRADE 199 

of the explosion had settled were hard at 
work again. But the shells began to fall with 
alarming regularity and in dangerous prox- 
imity to the dump and road outside. The 
Colonel moved over to the office, and found 
Vickers there gripping a notebook, a handful 
of papers under his arm, and talking into the 
telephone. He broke off his talk at sight of 
the Colonel. 

' ' One moment. Here he is now. Hold the 
wire." He held the receiver out. " Will you 
speak to Divisional H.Q., sir? They're ask- 
ing about the shelling here." 

The Colonel took the 'phone and spoke 
quietly into it. Another shell dropped with 
a rending crash somewhere outside, and Vick- 
ers jumped for the door and vanished. The 
piled boxes of the " office" walls shivered and 
rocked, and dust rained down on the paper- 
strewn table. But the Colonel went on talk- 
ing, telling what the shelling was like and how 
heavy it was, the number of waggons wait- 
ing, and so on. 

He was putting the 'phone down as Vickers 
entered hurriedly and reported, "Just out- 



200 FRONT LINES 

side in the road, sir. Did in a waggon and 
team and two drivers. ' ' 

"We've got to carry on as long as we can, 
Vickers," said the Colonel. ''The stuff is 
urgently wanted up there, and we'd lose a lot 
of time to clear the teams out and bring them 
back." 

"Very good, sir," said Vickers, and van- 
ished again. 

The shelling continued. Most of the shells 
fell close to, but clear of, the dump, but an- 
other hit a pile of shells, exploding none, but 
setting a few splintered boxes on fire. The 
fire, fortunately, was smothered in a moment. 
Another burst just at the entrance to the 
curved road through the dump, smashing an 
ammunition waggon to a wreck of splintered 
woodwork and twisted iron, blowing two 
teams to pieces, and killing and wounding 
half a dozen men. There was a moment's 
confusion, a swirl of plunging horses, a 
squealing of braked wheels, a shouting and 
calling and cursing. But as the smoke and 
dust cleared the confusion died away, and in 
five minutes the wrecked waggon and dead 



A ROARING TRADE 201 

animals were dragged clear, and the work was 
in full swing again. Vickers, moving amongst 
the teams, heard two drivers arguing noisily. 
"What did I tell you?" one was shouting. 
"What did I tell you! Didn't I say mules 
would stand shell-fire good as any hosses? 
Here's my pair never winked an eye." 

"Winked a eye?" said the other scorn- 
fully. ' ' They tried to do a obstacle race over 
my waggon. An' they kicked sufferm' Saul 
outer your centres an' each other. Yer off- 
lead's near kicked the hin' leg off 'n his mate, 
anyway. ' ' 

' ' Kicked ? ' ' said the first, and then stopped 
as his eye caught the red gleam of flowing 
blood. "Strewth, he's wounded. Mybloomin' 
donkey's casualtied. Whoa, Neddy; stan' 
till I see what 's wrong. You '11 get a bloomin ' 
wound stripe to wear for this, Neddy. Whoa, 
you " 

Vickers, remembering the snatch of talk, 
was able to tell the Colonel a moment later, 
"No, sir; the men don't seem rattled a mite; 
and they're working like good 'uns." 

The shelling continued, but so did the work. 



202 FRONT LINES 

The waggons continued to roll in, to fill up, 
and pull out again ; the pile of ammunition 
boxes to dwindle, the heap of empty boxes to 
grow. Vickers scurried round, keeping an 
eye on smooth working, trying at intervals 
to press some of his stock of gas-shells on 
any battery that would take them. * ' I Ve fair 
got wind up about them," he confided to one 
waggon-line officer. ''If a shell hits them it 
will stop the whole blessed dump working. 
Then where will your guns be for shell ? ' ' 

The shelling continued, and caught some 
more casualties. Vickers superintended their 
removal, wiped his hands on his breeches, 
and went back to his office and his " returns " 
and the worry of trying to account for the 
shells scattered by the enemy shell in his 
dump. The men worked on doggedly The 
gun-line wanted shells, and the gun-line would 
get them — unless or until the dump blew 
up. 

The shelling continued — although, to be 
sure, it eased off at intervals — until dawn; 
but by that time the last loaded waggon had 
departed and the dump was almost empty of 



A ROARING TRADE 203 

shells. The German gunners were beaten 
and the dump had won. Presently the Ger- 
man line would feel the weight of the dump's 
work. 

Three hours later, after a final struggle 
with his ' ' returns, ' ' Vickers, dirty and dusty, 
grimed with smoke and ash, a stubble of 
beard on his chin and tired rings under his 
eyes, trudged to the mess dug-out for break- 
fast and tea — tea, hot tea, especially. He 
met the Colonel, and recounted briefly the va- 
rious thousands of assorted shells — high ex- 
plosive, shrapnel, lyddite, and so on — he had 
sent up to the gun-line during the night. He 
also recounted sorrowfully the night's casu- 
alties amongst his dump party, and spoke 
with a little catch in his voice of his dead 
sergeant, "the best N.C.O. he'd ever known." 

"A good night's work well done, Vickers," 
said the Colonel quietly. 

"A roaring trade, sir, as you said," an- 
swered Vickers, with a thin smile. "And 
hark at 'em up there now," and he nodded 
his head towards the distant gun-line. They 
stood a moment in the sunshine at the top of 



204 FRONT LINES 

the dug-out steps. Bound them the heavies 
still thundered and crashed and cracked sav- 
agely, and from the gun line where the field 
guns worked the roar of sound came rolling 
and throbbing fiercely and continuously. 

"They'll pay back for what you got last 
night, ' ' said the Colonel, ' ' and some of them 
wouldn't be able to do it but for your work 
last night.' ' 

The ground under them trembled to the 
blast of a near-by heavy battery, the air vi- 
brated again to the furious drumming fire 
that thundered back from the front lines. 

"That's some consolation," said Vickers, 
"for my sergeant. Small profit and quick 
returns to their shells ; the right sort of motto, 
that, for a roaring trade." 

The fire of the gun-line, rising to a fresh 
spasm of fury, fairly drowned the last of his 
words. "A proper roaring trade," he re- 
peated loudly, and nodded his head again in 
the direction of the sound. 



XII 

HOME 

If anybody had told Lieutenant "LoHie" 
Dutford, Lieutenant and Adjutant of the 
Stolidshire Buffs, that he would come one 
day to be glad to get back to the battalion and 
the front, Lollie would have called that 
prophet an unqualified idiot. And, yet, he 
would later have been convicted out of his 
own mouth. 

Lollie was a hardened veteran campaigner, 
twenty-two years of age, and full two years' 
trench-age — which means a lot more — and he 
started to return from his latest leave with 
a pleasing consciousness of his own knowl- 
edge of the ropes, and a comforting belief that 
he would be able to make his return journey 
in comparative ease. Certainly, the start 
from Victoria Station at seven o'clock on a 
drizzling wet morning, which had necessi- 
tated his being up at 5.30 a.m., had not been 

205 



206 FRONT LINES 

pleasant, but even the oldest soldier has to 
put up with these things, and be assured that 
no "old soldiering" can dodge them. It an- 
noyed him a good deal to find when they 
reached Folkestone that the boat would not 
start until well on in the afternoon, and that 
he had been dragged out of bed at cock-crow 
for no other purpose than to loaf disconso- 
lately half a day round a dead-and-alive 
pleasure resort. He was irritated again when 
he went to have lunch in a certain hotel, to 
have the price of his meal demanded from 
him before he was allowed into the dining- 
room. "It's not only buying a pig in a poke," 
as he told his chance table companion, "but 
it's the beastly insinuation that we're not to 
be trusted to pay for our lunch after we've 
had it that I don't like." He also didn't like, 
and said so very forcibly, the discovery that 
there is a rule in force which prohibits any 
officer proceeding overseas from having any 
intoxicating liquor with his meal, although 
any other not for overseas that day could 
have what he liked. "If that's not inviting a 
fellow to lie and say he is staying this side I 



HOME 207 

dunno what is," said Lollie disgustedly. 
"But why should I be induced to tell lies for 
the sake of a pint of bitter. And if I'm 
trusted not to lie, why can't I be trusted not 
to drink -too much. However, it's one more 
of their mysterious ways this side, I s'pose." 
He evaporated a good deal of his remaining 
good temper over the lunch. "Not much 
wonder they want their cash first, " he said; 
"I haven't had enough to feed a hungry spar- 
row. ' ' 

Old-soldier experience took him straight to 
a good place on the boat, and room to lie down 
on a cushioned settee before it was filled up, 
and he spent the passage in making up some 
of his early morning lost sleep. On arrival 
at the other side he found that his train was 
not due to start for up-country until after 
midnight — "not late enough to be worth go- 
ing to bed before, and too late to sit up with 
comfort," as he declared. He had a good 
dinner at the Officers' Club, after rather a 
long wait for a vacant seat, but after it could 
find no place to sit down in the crowded 
smoke-room or reading-rooms. However, he 



208 FRONT LINES 

knew enough to take him round to a popular 
hotel bar, where he spent a couple of joyful 
hours meeting a string of old friends passing 
to or from all parts of "the line," and swap- 
ping news and gossip of mutually known 
places and people up front. Lollie had 
brought along with him a young fellow he had 
met in the club. Bullivant was returning 
from his first leave, and so was rather ig- 
norant of " the ropes," and had begged Lollie 
to put him wise to any wrinkles he knew for 
passing the time and smoothing the journey 
up. " 'Pon my word," Lollie confided to 
him after the departure of another couple of 
old friends, "it's almost worth coming back 
to meet so many pals and chin over old times 
and places." 

"I don't like this fool notion of no whisky 
allowed," said Bullivant. "Now, you're an 
old bird; don't you know any place we can 
get a real drink?" 

1 1 Plenty, ' ' said Lollie. ' ' If you don 't mind 
paying steep for 'em and meeting a crowd of 
people and girls I've no use for myself." 

"I'mon," replied Bullivant. ' ' Lead me to 



HOME 209 

it. But don't let's forget that twelve-some- 
thing train." 

They spent half an hour in the " place," 
where Lollie drank some exceedingly bad 
champagne, and spent every minute of the 
time in a joyful reunion with an old school 
chum he hadn't seen for years. Then he 
searched Bullivant out and they departed for 
the hotel to pick up their kits and move to the 
station. At the hotel the barman told him in 
confidence that the midnight train was can- 
celled, and that he 'd have to wait till next day. 
"He's right, of course," Lollie told Bulli- 
vant. "He always gets these things right. 
He has stacks more information about every- 
thing than all the Intelligence crowd together. 
If you want to know where your unit is in the 
line or when a train arrives or a boat leaves, 
come along and ask Henri, and be sure you'll 
get it right — if he knows you well enough; 
but all the same we must go to the station 
and get it officially that our train's a wash- 
out to-night." They went there and got it 
officially, with the added information that 
they would go to-morrow night, same time, 



210 FRONT LINES 

but to report to R.T.O. (Eailway Transport 
Officer) at noon. There were no beds at the 
club (" Never are after about tea-time," Lol- 
lie told Bullivant), and, to save tramping in 
a vain search around hotels, they returned 
to their barman-information-bureau, and 
learned from him that all the leading hotels 
were full up to the last limits of settees, 
made-up beds, and billiard rooms. Lollie's 
knowledge saved them further wanderings by 
taking them direct to another ' ' place, ' ' where 
they obtained a not-too-clean bedroom. ' ' Not 
as bad as plenty we've slept in up the line," 
said Lollie philosophically; "only I'd advise 
you to sleep in your clothes ; it leaves so much 
the less front open to attack." 

They reported at the station at noon next 
day, and were told their train would leave 
at 1 p.m., and ' ' change at St. Oswear. ' ' They 
rushed to a near hotel and swallowed lunch, 
hurried back to the train, and sat in it for 
a solid two hours before it started. It was long 
after dark when they reached St. Oswear, 
where they bundled out onto the platform and 
sought information as to the connection. 



HOME 211 

They were told it was due in any minute, 
would depart immediately after arrival, and 
that anyone who had to catch it must not 
leave the station. "Same old gag," said Lol- 
lie when they had left the R.T.O. "But you 
don't catch me sitting on a cold platform 
half the night. I've had some, thanks." For 
the sum of one franc down and a further 
franc on completion of engagement he bought 
the services of a French boy, and led Bulli- 
vant to a cafe just outside. They had a leis- 
urely and excellent dinner there of soup, ome- 
lette, and coffee, and then spent another hour 
in comfortable arm-chairs until their train 
arrived. Lollie's boy scout reported twice 
the arrival of trains for up the line, but in- 
vestigation found these to be the wrong 
trains, and the two friends returned to their 
arm-chairs and another coffee. Their right 
train was also duly reported, and Lollie paid 
off his scout, and they found themselves seats 
on board. 

"I'm mighty glad I struck you," said Bul- 
livant gratefully. "I'd sure have worn my 
soul and my feet out tramping this platform 



212 FRONT LINES 

all these hours if you hadn't been running 
the deal." 

"I'm getting up to all these little dodges," 
said Lollie modestly. ' 1 1 know the way things 
run this side now a heap better 'n I do in 
England." 

But all his knowledge did not save them a 
horribly uncomfortable night in an over- 
crowded compartment, and even when Bulli- 
vant dropped off at his station two others 
got in. Lollie reached his station only to be 
told his Division had moved, that to find them 
he must go back by train thirty kilometres, 
change, and proceed to another railhead and 
inquire there. He was finally dumped off at 
his railhead in the shivery dawn — "always 
seems to be an appalling lot of daybreak 
work about these stunts somehow," as he 
remarked disgustedly — and had a subsequent 
series of slow-dragging adventures in his 
final stages of the journey to the battalion by 
way of a lift from the supply officer's car and 
a motor lorry to Befilling Point, a sleep there 
on some hay bales, a further jolty ride on 
the ration waggons towards the trenches, and 



HOME 213 

a last tramp up with the ration party. The 
battalion had just moved in to rather a quiet 
part of the line, and were occupying the sup- 
port trenches, and Lollie found the H.Q. mess 
established in a commodious dug-out, very 
comfortably furnished. 

''Yes, sir," he said, in answer to a ques- 
tion from the CO., "and I tell you I'm real 
glad to be home again. I've been kicking 
round the country like a lost dog for days, 
and I feel more unwashed and disgruntled 
than if I'd just come out of a push." 

The door-curtain of sacking pushed aside, 
and the Padre came in. "Ha, Lollie. Glad 
to have you back again," he said, shaking 
hands warmly. l ' Mess has been quite missing 
you. Sorry for your own sake you're here, of 
course, but " 

"You needn't be, Padre," said Lollie 
cheerfully. "I was just saying I'm glad to 
be back. And 'pon my word it's true. It's 
quite good to be home here again." 

"Home!" said the Padre and the Acting- 
Adjutant together, and laughed. "I like 
that." 



214 FRONT LINES 

"Well, it is," said Lollie stoutly. "Any- 
way, it feels like it to me." 

That feeling apparently was driven home 
in the course of the next hour or two. His 
servant showed him to his dug-out, which he 
was to share with the second in command, 
had a. portable bath and a dixie full of boiling 
water for him, his valise spread on a comfort- 
able stretcher-bed of wire netting on a 
wooden frame, clean shirt and things laid 
out, everything down to soap and towel and 
a packet of his own pet brand of cigarettes 
ready to his hand. Lollie pounced on the 
cigarettes. "Like a fool I didn't take enough 
to last me," he said, lighting up and drawing 
a long and deep breath and exhaling slowly 
and luxuriously. "And I couldn't get 'em 
over the other side for love or money. ' ' 

While he stripped and got ready for his 
bath, his servant hovered round shaking out 
the things he took off and giving him snatches 
of gossip about the battalion. Lollie saw 
him eyeing the exceedingly dull buttons on 
his tunic and laughed. "Bather dirty, aren't 
they!" he said. "I'm afraid I forgot 'em 



HOME 215 

most of the time I was over there. And I 
hate cleaning buttons anyhow; always get 
more of the polish paste on the tunic than on 
the buttons." 

After his bath and change, Lollie wandered 
round and had a talk to different officers, to 
his orderly-room sergeant, and the officers' 
mess cook, inspected the kitchen arrange- 
ments with interest, and discussed current 
issue of rations and meals. "Glad you're 
back, sir," said the mess cook. "I did the 
best I could, but the messing never seems to 
run just right when you 're away. I never can 
properly remember the different things some 
of them don't like." 

The same compliment to his mess-catering 
abilities was paid him at dinner that night. 
"Ha, dinner," said the Padre; "we can look 
for a return to our good living again now 
that you're ho — back again, Lollie." 

Lollie laughed. "Nearly caught you that 
time, Padre," he said. "You almost said 
'home again,' didn't you?" And the Padre 
had to confess he nearly did. 

They had a very pleasant little dinner, and, 



216 FRONT LINES 

even if the curry was mostly bully beef and 
the wine was the thin, sharp claret of local 
purchase, Lollie enjoyed every mouthful and 
every minute of the meal. Several of the 
other officers of the battalion dropped in after 
dinner on one excuse or another, but, as Lollie 
suspected, mainly to shake hands with him 
and hear any of the latest from the other 
side. 

"There's a rum ration to-night," said the 
Second, about ten. "What about a rum 
punch, Lollie 1 ' ' 

"I tell you this is good," said Lollie con- 
tentedly a quarter of an hour later, as they 
sat sipping the hot rum. " 'Pon my word, 
it's worth going away, if it's only for the 
pleasure of •coming back." 

The others laughed at him. ' ' Coming back 
home, eh?" scoffed the Second. 

"Yes, but look here, 'pon my word, it is 
home," said Lollie earnestly. "I tell you it's 
like going to a foreign country, going to the 
other side now. There's so many rules and 
regulations you can't keep up with them. 
You always seem to want a drink, or meet a 



HOME 217 

pal you'd like a drink with, just in the no- 
drink hours. In uniform you can't even get 
food after some silly hour like nine or ten 
o'clock. Why, after the theatre one night, 
when I was with three people in civvies, we 
went to a restaurant, and I had to sit hungry 
and watch them eat. They could get food, 
and I couldn 't. And one day a pal didn 't turn 
up that I was lunching at the Emperor's, 
and I found I couldn't have any of the things 
I wanted most, because it cost more than 
3s. 6d. I'd set my heart on a dozen natives 
and a bit of grilled chicken — you know how 
you do get hankering for certain things after 
a spell out here — but I had to feed off poached 
eggs or some idiotic thing like that. ' ' 

"But isn't there some sense in that rule?" 
said the Padre. "Isn't the idea to prevent 
young officers being made to pay more than 
they can afford?" 

Lollie snorted. "Does it prevent it?" he 
said. "My lunch cost me over fifteen bob 
rather than under it, what with a bottle of 
decent Burgundy, and coffee and liqueur, and 
tip to the waiter, and so on. And, anyhow, 



218 FRONT LINES 

who but an utter ass would go to the Em- 
peror's if he couldn't afford a stiff price for 
a meal? But it isn't only these rules and 
things over there that makes it 'coming home' 
to come back here. In England you 're made 
to feel an outsider. D 'you know I had a mili- 
tary police fellow pull me up for not carrying 
gloves in the first hour of my leave ? ' ' 

The others murmured sympathy. "What 
did you say, Lollie ? ' ' asked the Acting- Adju- 
tant. 

"I made him jump," said Lollie, beaming. 
"I was standing looking for a taxi, and this 
fellow came alongside and looked me up and 
down. 'Your gloves have ,' he was be- 
ginning, when I whipped round on him. ' Are 
you speaking to me?' I snapped. 'Yessir,' 
he said, stuttering a bit. ' Then what do you 
mean by not saluting?' I demanded, and 
sailed into him, and made him stand to at- 
tention while I dressed him down and told 
him I'd a good mind to report him for inso- 
lent and insubordinate behaviour. 'And, 
now,' I finished up, 'there's a brigadier-gen- 
eral just crossing the street, and he's not 



HOME 219 

carrying gloves. Go 'n speak to him about it, 
and then come back, and I '11 give you my card 
to report me. ' He sneaked off — and he didn't 
go after the general. ' ' 

The others laughed and applauded. ' ' Good 
stroke." "Rather smart, Lollie." "It is 
rather sickening." 

"But as I was saying," went on Lollie, 
after another sip at his steaming punch, "it 
isn't so much these things make a fellow glad 
to be back here. It's because this side really 
is getting to feel home-like. You know your 
way about Boulogne, and all the railways, and 
where they run to and from, better than you 
do lines in England. I do, anyhow. You 
know what's a fair price for things, and what 
you ought to pay, and you haven't the faint- 
est idea of that in England. You just pay, 
and be sure you're usually swindled if they 
know you're from this side. Here you know 
just the things other people know, and very 
little more and very little less, and you're 
interested in much the same things. Over 
there you have to sit mum while people talk 
by the hour about sugar cards and Sinn Fein, 



220 FRONT LINES 

and whether there'll be a new Ministry of 
Coke and Coal, and, if so, who'll get the job; 
and you hear people grouse, and read letters 
in the papers, about the unfair amusement 
tax, and they pray hard for pouring rain so 
it'll stop the Zepps coming over — not think- 
ing or caring, I suppose, that it will hang 
up our Push at the same time, or thinking of 
us in the wet shell-holes — and they get agi- 
tated to death because the Minister for For- 
eign Affairs " Lollie stopped abruptly 

and glanced round the table. ' ' Can anybody 
here tell me who IS the Minister for Foreign 
Affairs!" he demanded. There was a dead 
silence for a moment and an uneasy shuffle. 
Then the Padre cleared his throat and be- 
gan, slowly, "Ha, I think it is " 

Lollie interrupted. "There you are!" he 
said triumphantly. ' ' None of you know, and 
you only think, Padre. Just what I'm say- 
ing. We don't know the things they know 
over there, and, what's more, don't care a 
rush about 'em." 

' ' There 's a good deal in what you say, Lol- 



HOME 221 

lie," said the CO. "But, after all, Home's 
Home to me." 

"I know, sir," said the Second. "So it is 
to me." 

But Lollie fairly had the bit between his 
teeth, although, perhaps, the rum punch was 
helping. "Well, I find this side gets more 
and more home to me. Over there you keep 
reading and hearing about the pacifist dan- 
ger, and every other day there are strikes 
and rumours of strikes, either for more 
money or because of food shortage — makes 
one wonder what some of 'em would say to 
our fellows' bob a day or twenty-four hours 
living on a bully and biscuit iron ration. I 
tell you at the end of ten days over there you 
begin to think we've lost the blessed war and 
that it'd serve some of 'em right if we did. 
Here we're only interested in real things and 
real men. There's hardly a man I know in 
England now — and probably you're the same 
if you stop to think. And I come back here 
and drop into a smooth little routine, and 
people I like, and a job I know, and talk 
and ways I'm perfectly familiar with and 



222 FRONT LINES 

at home in — that's the only word, at home 
in." 

''Bully beef and bullets and Stand To at 
dawn," murmured the Acting- Adjutant. 
''There were two men reported killed in the 
trench to-night." 

"And they might have been killed by a 
taxi in the Strand if they'd been there," 
retorted Lollie. 

"Remember those billets near Pop?" asked 

the Acting-Adjutant. "Lovely home that, 

wasn't it?" 
The others burst into laughter. "Had you 

there, Lollie," chuckled the CO. "It was a 
hole, eh?" said the Second, and guffawed 
again. "D'you remember Madame, and the 
row she made because my man borrowed her 
wash-tub for me to bath in," said the Padre. 
"And the struggle Lollie had to get a cook- 
house for the mess, and fed us on cold bully 
mainly," said the CO., still chuckling. 

"Yes, now, but just hold on," said Lollie. 
' ' Do any of you recollect anything particular 
about Blankchester — in England?" 

There was silence again. "Didn't we halt 



HOME 223 

there a night that time we marched from 
Blank?" said the CO. hesitatingly. "No, 
I remember," said the Padre. "We halted 
and lunched there. Ha, Red Lion Inn, roses 
over the porch. Pretty place. ' ' The Second 
evidently remembered nothing. 

"You're right, sir," said Lollie. "We 
halted there a night. The Red Lion village I 
forget the name of, Padre, though I remem- 
ber the place. Now, let's see if a few other 
places stir your memories." He went over, 
slowly and with a pause after each, the names 
of a number of well-known towns of Eng- 
land and Scotland. The CO. yawned, and 
the others looked bored. "What are you get- 
ting at, Lollie?" demanded the Acting- Adju- 
tant wearily. Lollie laughed. "Those are 
'home' towns," he said, "and they don't 
interest you a scrap. But I could go through 
the list of every town in the North of Prance 
and Flanders — Ballieul and Poperinghe, and 
Bethune and Wipers, and Amiens and Ar- 
mentieres and all the rest — and there isn't 
one that doesn't bring a pleasant little homey 
thrill to the sound; and not one that hasn't 



224 FRONT LINES 

associations of people or times that you'll re- 
member to your dying day. Even that rotten 
billet at Pop you remember and can make 
jokes and laugh over — as you will for the 
rest of your lives. It's all these things that 
make me say it's good to be back here — 
home, ' ' and he stood up from the table. 

They all chaffed him again, but a little less 
briskly and with a doubt evidently dawning 
in their minds. 

Lollie went off to his bed presently, and the 
others soon followed. The Second and the 
Padre sat on to finish a final pipe. When the 
Second went along to the dug-out which Lollie 
was sharing, he went in very quietly, and 
found the candle burning by Lollie 's bed 
and Lollie fast asleep. He was taking his 
coat off when Lollie stirred and said some- 
thing indistinctly. "What's that?" said the 
Major. "Thought you were asleep." 

"It's good, Lord, but it's good to be 
home again," said Lollie sleepily, and mut- 
tered again. The Major looked closely at 
him. "Talking in his sleep again," he 
thought. "Poor lad. Funny notion that 



HOME 225 

about back home — here," and he glanced 
round the rough earth walls, the truckle bed, 
the earth floor, and the candle stuck in a bot- 
tle. "Home! Good Lord!" 

". . . So good to be back home," Lollie 

went on . . . "good to find you here " 

The Major "tch-tch-ed" softly between his 
teeth and stooped to pull his boots off, and the 
voice went on, evenly again: "That's the 
best bit of coming home, all that really makes 
it home — just being with you again — 
dearest." The Major stood erect abruptly. 
". . . Some day we'll have our own little 
home ..." and this time at the end of the 
sentence, clear and distinct, came a girl's 
name . . . "Maisie." 

With sudden haste the Major jerked off his 
remaining boot, blew out the light, and tum- 
bled into bed. He caught a last fragment, 
something about "another kiss, dear," before 
he could pull the blankets up and muffle them 
tight about his ears to shut out what he had 
neither right nor wish to hear. After that 
he lay thinking long and staring into the 
darkness. "So — that's it. Talked brave 



226 FRONT LINES 

enough, too. I was actually 'believing he 
meant it, and cursing the old war again, and 
thinking what a sad pity a fine youngster 
like that should come to feel a foreign country 
home. Sad pity, but" — his mind jumped 
ahead a fortnight to the next Push-to-Be — "I 
don't know that it's not more of a pity as it 
is, for her, and — him. ' ' 



XIII 

BRING UP THE GUNS 

When Jack Duncan and Hugh Morrison sud- 
denly had it brought home to them that they 
ought to join the New Armies, they lost little 
time in doing so. Since they were chums of 
long standing in a City office, it went without 
saying that they decided to join and "go 
through it" together, but it was much more 
open to argument what branch of the Service 
or regiment they should join. 

They discussed the question in all its bear- 
ings, but being as ignorant of the Army and 
its ways as the average young Englishman 
was in the early days of the war, they had 
little evidence except varied and contradic- 
tory hearsay to act upon. Both being about 
twenty-five they were old enough and busi- 
ness-like enough to consider the matter in a 
business-like way, and yet both were young 
enough to be influenced by the flavour of ro- 

227 



228 FRONT LINES 

mance they found in a picture they came 
across at the time. It was entitled "Bring 
up the Guns," and it showed a horsed battery 
in the wild whirl of advancing into ac- 
tion, the horses straining and stretching in 
front of the bounding guns, the drivers 
crouched forward or sitting up plying whip 
and spur, the officers galloping and waving 
the men on, dust swirling from leaping hoofs 
and wheels, whip-thongs streaming, heads 
tossing, reins flying loose, altogether a blood- 
stirring picture of energy and action, speed 
and power. 

"I've always had a notion," said Duncan 
reflectively, "that I'd like to have a good 
whack at riding. One doesn't get much 
chance of it in city life, and this looks like a 
good chance." 

"And I've heard it said," agreed Mor- 
rison, "that a fellow with any education 
stands about the best chance in artillery work. 
We might as well plump for something where 
we can use the bit of brains we've got." 

"That applies to the Engineers too, doesn't 
it ? " said Duncan. ' ' And the pottering about 



BRING UP THE GUNS 229 

we did for a time with electricity might help 
there." 

"Um-m," Morrison agreed doubtfully, still 
with an appreciative eye on the picture of the 
flying guns. "Rather slow work though — 
digging and telegraph and pontoon and that 
sort of thing." 

"Right-oh," said Duncan with sudden deci- 
sion. "Let's try for the Artillery." 

"Yes. We'll call that settled," said Mor- 
rison ; and both stood a few minutes looking 
with a new interest at the picture, already 
with a dawning sense that they "belonged," 
that these gallant gunners and leaping teams 
were "Ours," looking forward with a little 
quickening of the pulse to the day when they, 
too, would go whirling into action in like des- 
perate and heart-stirring fashion. 

"Come on," said Morrison. "Let's get it 
over. To the recruiting-office — quick march. ' ' 

And so came two more gunners into the 
Royal Regiment. 

When the long, the heart-breakingly long 
period of training and waiting for their guns, 



230 FRONT LINES 

and more training and slow collecting of their 
horses, and more training was at last over, 
and the battery sailed for France, Morrison 
and Duncan were both sergeants and ' ' Num- 
bers One" in charge of their respective guns ; 
and before the battery had been in France 
three months Morrison had been promoted 
to Battery Sergeant-Major. 

The battery went through the routine of 
trench warfare and dug its guns into deep 
pits, and sent its horses miles away back, and 
sat in the same position for months at a time, 
had slack spells and busy spells, shelled and 
was shelled, and at last moved up to play its 
part in The Push. 

Of that part I don't propose to tell more 
than the one incident — an incident of ma- 
chine-pattern sameness to the lot of many 
batteries. 

The infantry had gone forward again and 
the ebb-tide of battle was leaving the battery 
with many others almost beyond high-water 
mark of effective range. Preparations were 
made for an advance. The Battery Comman- 
der went forward and reconnoitred the new 



BRING UP THE GUNS 231 

position the battery was to move into, every- 
thing was packed up and made ready, while 
the guns still continued to pump out long- 
range fire. The Battery Commander came 
in again and explained everything to his offi- 
cers and gave the necessary detailed orders 
to the Sergeant-Major, and presently re- 
ceived orders of date and hour to move. 

This was in the stages of The Push when 
rain was the most prominent and uncomfort- 
able feature of the weather. The guns were 
in pits built over with strong walls and roof- 
ing of sandbags and beams which were 
weather-tight enough, but because the floors 
of the pits were lower than the surface of the 
ground, it was only by a constant struggle 
that the water was held back from draining 
in and forming a miniature lake in each pit. 
Eound and between the guns was a mere 
churned-up sea of sticky mud. As soon as 
the new battery position was selected a party 
went forward to it to dig and prepare places 
for the guns. The Battery Commander went 
off to select a suitable point for observation 
of his fire, and in the battery the remaining 



232 FRONT LINES 

gunners busied themselves in preparation for 
the move. The digging party were away all 
the afternoon, all night, and on through the 
next day. Their troubles and tribulations 
don't come into this story, but from all they 
had to say afterwards they were real and 
plentiful enough. 

Towards dusk a scribbled note came back 
from the Battery Commander at the new 
position to the officer left in charge with the 
guns, and the officer sent the orderly straight 
on down with it to the Sergeant-Ma j or with 
a message to send word back for the teams to 
move up. 

"All ready here," said the Battery Com- 
mancler's note. "Bring up the guns and fir- 
ing battery waggons as soon as you can. I'll 
meet you on the way. ' ' 

The Sergeant-Major glanced through the 
note and shouted for the Numbers One, the 
sergeants in charge of each gun. He had al- 
ready arranged with the officer exactly what 
was to be done when the order came, and now 
he merely repeated his orders rapidly to the 
sergeants and told them to "get on with it." 



BRING UP THE GUNS 233 

When the Lieutenant came along five minutes 
after, muffled to the ears in a wet mackintosh, 
he found the gunners hard at work. 

"I started in to pull the sandbags clear, 
sir," reported the Sergeant-Major. "Right 
you are, ' ' said the Lieutenant. ' ' Then you 'd 
better put the double detachments on to pull 
one gun out and then the other. We must 
man-handle 'em back clear of the trench 
ready for the teams to hook in when they 
come along. ' ' 

For the next hour every man, from 
the Lieutenant and Sergeant-Major down, 
sweated and hauled and slid and floundered 
in slippery mud and water, dragging gun 
after gun out of its pit and back a half-dozen 
yards clear. It was quite dark when they 
were ready, and the teams splashed up and 
swung round their guns. A fairly heavy 
bombardment was carrying steadily on along 
the line, the sky winked and blinked and 
flamed in distant and near flashes of gun fire, 
and the air trembled to the vibrating roar 
and sudden thunder-claps of their discharge, 
the whine and moan and shriek of the flying 



234 FRONT LINES 

shells. No shells had fallen near the battery 
position for some little time, but, unfortu- 
nately, just after the teams had arrived, a 
German battery chose to put over a series of 
five-point-nines unpleasantly close. The 
drivers sat, motionless blotches of shadow 
against the flickering sky, while the gunners 
strained and heaved on wheels and drag- ropes 
to bring the trails close enough to slip on 
the hooks. A shell dropped with a crash about 
fifty yards short of the battery and the 
pieces flew whining and whistling over the 
heads of the men and horses. Two more 
swooped down out of the sky with a rising 
wail-rush-roar of sound that appeared to be 
bringing the shells straight down on top of 
the workers' heads. Some ducked and 
crouched close to earth, and both shells 
passed just over and fell in leaping gusts of 
flame and ground-shaking crashes beyond 
the teams. Again the fragments hissed and 
whistled past and lumps of earth and mud 
fell spattering and splashing and thumping 
over men and guns and teams. A driver 
yelped suddenly, the horses in another team 



BRING UP THE GUNS 235 

snorted and plunged, and then out of the thick 
darkness that seemed to shut down after the 
searing light of the shell-burst flames came 
sounds of more plunging hoofs, a driver's 
voice cursing angrily, thrashings and splash- 
ings and stamping. " Horse down here . . . 
bring a light . . . whoa, steady, boy . . . 
where's that light?" 

Three minutes later : ' ' Horse killed, driver 
wounded in the arm, sir," reported the Ser- 
geant-Ma j or. "Biding leader Number Two 
gun, and centre driver of its waggon. ' ' 

" Those spare horses near?" said the Lieu- 
tenant quickly. ' ' Right. Call up a pair ; put 
'em in lead ; put the odd driver waggon cen- 
tre." 

Before the change was completed and the 
dead horse dragged clear, the first gun was 
reported hooked on and ready to move, and 
was given the order to "Walk march" and 
pull out on the wrecked remnant of a road 
that ran behind the position. Another group 
of five-nines came over before the others were 
ready, and still the drivers and teams waited 



236 FRONT LINES 

motionless for the clash that told of the trail- 
eye dropping on the hook. 

"Get to it, gunners," urged the Sergeant- 
Major, as he saw some of the men instinc- 
tively stop and crouch to the yell of the ap- 
proaching shell. "Time we were out of this." 

"Hear, bloomin' hear," drawled one of 
the shadowy drivers. "An' if you wants to 
go to bed, Lanky" — to one of the crouching 
gunners — "just lemme get this gun away 
fust, an' then you can curl up in that blanky 
shell- 'ole." 

There were no more casualties getting out, 
but one gun stuck in a shell-hole and took the 
united efforts of the team and as many gun- 
ners as could crowd on to the wheels and 
drag-ropes to get it moving and out on to 
the road. Then slowly, one by one, with a 
gunner walking and swinging a lighted lamp 
at the head of each team, the guns moved off 
along the pitted road. It was no road really, 
merely a wheel-rutted track that wound in 
and out the biggest shell-holes. The smaller 
ones were ignored, simply because there were 
too many of them to steer clear of, and into 



BRING UP THE GUNS 237 

them the limber and gun wheels dropped 
bumping, and were hauled out by sheer team 
and man power. 

It took four solid hours to cover less than 
half a mile of sodden, spongy, pulpy, wet 
ground, riddled with shell-holes, swimming 
in greasy mud and water. The ground they 
covered was peopled thick with all sorts of 
men who passed or crossed their way singly, 
in little groups, in large parties — wounded, 
hobbling wearily or being carried back, par- 
ties stumbling and fumbling a way up to some 
vague point ahead with rations and ammu- 
nition on pack animals and pack-men, the 
remnants of a battalion coming out crusted 
from head to foot in slimy wet mud, bowed 
under the weight of their packs and kits and 
arms; empty ammunition waggons and lim- 
bers lurching and bumping back from the 
gun-line, the horses staggering and slipping, 
the drivers struggling to hold them on their 
feet, to guide the wheels clear of the worst 
holes; a string of pack-mules filing past, 
their drivers dismounted and leading, and 
men and mules ploughing anything up to knee 



238 FRONT LINES 

depth in the mud, flat pannier-pouches swing- 
ing and jerking on the animals' sides, the 
brass tops of the 18-pounder shell-cases wink- 
ing and gleaming faintly in the flickering 
lights of the gun flashes. 

But of all these fellow wayfarers over the 
battle-field the battery drivers and gunners 
were hardly conscious. Their whole minds 
were so concentrated on the effort of holding 
and guiding and urging on their horses round 
or over the obstacle of the moment, a deeper 
and more sticky patch than usual, an extra 
large hole, a shattered tree stump, a dead 
horse, the wreck of a broken-down waggon, 
that they had no thought for anything out- 
side these. The gunners were constantly em- 
ployed manning the wheels and heaving on 
them with cracking muscles, hooking .on drag- 
ropes to one gun and hauling it clear of a 
hole, unhooking and going floundering back 
to hook on to another and drag it in turn 
out of its difficulty. 

The Battery Commander met them at a bad 
dip whe're the track degenerated frankly into 
a mud bath — and how he found or kept the 



BRING UP THE GUNS 239 

track or ever discovered them in that aching 
wilderness is one of the mysteries of war and 
the ways of Battery Commanders. It took 
another two hours, two mud-soaked night- 
mare hours, to come through that next hun- 
dred yards. It was not only that the mud 
was deep and holding, but the slough was 
so soft at bottom that the horses had no foot- 
hold, could get no grip to haul on, could little 
more than drag their own weight through, 
much less pull the guns. The teams were 
doubled, the double team taking one gun or 
waggon through, and then going back for the 
other. The waggons were emptied of their 
shell and filled again on the other side of the 
slough; and this you will remember meant 
the gunners carrying the rounds across a 
couple at a time, wading and floundering 
through mud over their knee-boot tops, re- 
placing the shells in the vehicle, and wading 
back for another couple. In addition to this 
they had to haul guns and waggons through 
practically speaking by man-power, because 
the teams, almost exhausted by the work and 
with little more than strength to get them- 



240 FRONT LINES 

selves through, gave bare assistance to the 
pull. The wheels, axle deep in the soft mud, 
were hauled round spoke by spoke, heaved 
and yo-hoed forward inches at a time. 

When at last all were over, the teams had 
to be allowed a brief rest — brief because the 
guns must be in position and under cover be- 
fore daylight came — and stood dejectedly 
with hanging ears, heaving flanks, and trem- 
bling legs. The gunners dropped prone or 
squatted almost at the point of exhaustion in 
the mud. But they struggled up, and the 
teams strained forward into the breast col- 
lars again when the word was given, and the 
weary procession trailed on at a jerky snail's 
pace once more. 

As they at last approached the new posi- 
tion the gun flashes on the horizon were turn- 
ing from orange to primrose, and although 
there was no visible lightening of the eastern 
sky, the drivers were sensible of a faintly re- 
covering use of their eyes, could see the dim 
shapes of the riders just ahead of them, the 
black shadows of the holes, and the wet shine 
of the mud under their horses' feet. 



BRING UP THE GUNS 241 

The hint of dawn set the guns on both sides 
to work with trebled energy. The new posi- 
tion was one of many others so closely set 
that the blazing flames from the gun muz- 
zles seemed to run out to right and left in a 
spouting wall of fire that leaped and van- 
ished, leaped and vanished without ceasing, 
while the loud ear-splitting claps from the 
nearer guns merged and ran out to the flanks 
in a deep drum roll of echoing thunder. The 
noise was so great and continuous that it 
drowned even the roar of the German shells 
passing overhead, the smash and crump of 
their fall and burst. 

But the line of flashes sparkling up and 
down across the front beyond the line of our 
own guns told a plain enough tale of the 
German guns' work. The Sergeant-Major, 
plodding along beside the Battery Comman- 
der, grunted an exclamation. 

"Boche is getting busy," said the Battery 
Commander. 

"Putting a pretty solid barrage down, isn't 
he, sir?" said the Sergeant-Major. "Can 
we get the teams through that?" 



242 FRONT LINES 

"Not much hope," said the Battery Com- 
mander, "but, thank Heaven, we don't have 
to try, if he keeps barraging there. It is be- 
yond our position. There are the gun-pits 
just off to the left." 

But, although the barrage was out in front 
of the position, there were a good many long- 
ranged shells coming beyond it to fall spout- 
ing fire and smoke and earth-clods on and 
behind the line of guns. The teams were 
flogged and lifted and spurred into a last 
desperate effort, wrenched the guns forward 
the last hundred yards and halted. Instantly 
they were unhooked, turned round, and 
started stumbling wearily back towards the 
rear; the gunners, reinforced by others 
scarcely less dead-beat than themselves by 
their night of digging in heavy wet soil, seized 
the guns and waggons, flung their last ounce 
of strength and energy into man-handling 
them up and into the pits. Two unlucky 
shells at that moment added heavily to the 
night's casualty list, one falling beside the 
retiring teams and knocking out half a dozen 
horses and two men, another dropping 



BRING UP THE GUNS 243 

within a score of yards of the gun-pits, killing 
three and wounding four gunners. Later, 
at intervals, two more gunners were wounded 
by flying splinters from chance shells that 
continued to drop near the pits as the guns 
were laboriously dragged through the quag- 
mire into their positions. But none of the 
casualties, none of the falls and screamings 
of the high-explosive shells, interrupted or 
delayed the work, and without rest or pause 
the men struggled and toiled on until the 
last gun was safely housed in its pit. 

Then the battery cooks served out warm 
tea, and the men drank greedily, and after, 
too worn out to be hungry or to eat the bis- 
cuit and cheese ration issued, flung them- 
selves down in the pits under and round 
their guns and slept there in the trampled 
mud. 

The Sergeant-Major was the last to lie 
down. Only after everyone else had ceased 
work, and he had visited each gun in turn 
and satisfied himself that all was correct, and 
made his report to the Battery Commander, 



244 FRONT LINES 

did he seek his own rest. Then he crawled 
into one of the pits, and before he slept had 
a few words with the "Number One" there, 
his old friend Duncan. The Sergeant-Major, 
feeling in his pockets for a match to light a 
cigarette, found the note which the Battery 
Commander had sent back and which had 
been passed on to him. He turned his torch- 
light on it and read it through to Duncan — 
"Bring up the guns and firing battery wag- 
gons ..." and then chuckled a little. "Bring 
up the guns. . . . Eemember that picture we 
saw before we joined, Duncan? And we fan- 
cied then we'd be bringing 'em up same fash- 
ion. And, good Lord, think of to-night." 

"Yes," grunted Duncan, "sad slump from 
our anticipations. There was some fun in 
that picture style of doing the job — some sort 
of dash and honour and glory. No honour 
and glory about 'Bring up the guns' these 
days. Napoo in it to-night anyway." 

The Sergeant-Major, sleepily sucking his 
damp cigarette, wrapped in his sopping Brit- 
ish Warm, curling up in a corner on the wet 



BRING UP THE GUNS 245 

cold earth, utterly spent with the night's 
work, cordially agreed. 

Perhaps, and anyhow one hopes, some peo- 
ple will think they were wrong. 



XIV 

OUR BATTERY'S PRISONER 

It was in the very small hours of a misty 
grey morning that the Lieutenant was re- 
lieved at the Forward Observing Position in 
the extreme front line established after the 
advance, and set out with his Signaller to re- 
turn to the Battery. His way took him over 
the captured ground and the maze of cap- 
tured trenches and dug-outs more or less de- 
stroyed by bombardment, and because there 
were still a number of German shells coming 
over the two kept as nearly as possible to a 
route which led them along or close to the old 
trenches, and so under or near some sort of 
cover. 

The two were tired after a strenuous day, 
which had commenced the previous dawn in 
the Battery O.P., 1 and finished in the ruined 
building in the new front line, and a couple 

1 Observation Post. 
246 



OUR BATTERY'S PRISONER 247 

of hours' sleep in a very cold and wet cellar. 
The Lieutenant, plodding over the wet 
ground, went out of his way to walk along 
a part of trench where his Battery had been 
wire-cutting, and noted with a natural pro- 
fessional interest and curiosity the nature 
and extent of the damage done to the old 
enemy trenches and wire, when his eye sud- 
denly caught the quick movement of a shad- 
owy grey figure, which whisked instantly out 
of sight somewhere along the trench they 
were in. 

The Lieutenant halted abruptly. "Did 
you see anyone move?" he asked the Sig- 
naller, who, of course, being behind the officer 
in the trench, had seen nothing, and said so. 
They pushed along the trench, and, coming to 
the spot where the figure had vanished, 
found the opening to a dug-out with a long 
set of stairs vanishing down into the dark- 
ness. Memories stirred in the officer's mind 
of tales about Germans who had "lain 
doggo" in ground occupied by us, and had, 
over a buried wire, kept in touch with their 
batteries and directed their fire on to our new 



248 FRONT LINES 

positions, and this, with some vague instinct 
of the chase, prompted the decision he an- 
nounced to his Signaller that he was "going 
down to have a look.' , 

"Better be careful, sir," said the Signaller. 
"You don't know if the gas has cleared out of 
a deep place like that." This was true, be- 
cause a good deal of gas had been sent over 
in the attack of the day before, and the offi- 
cer began to wonder if he'd be a fool to go 
down. But, on the other hand, if a German 
was there he would know there was no gas, 
and, anyhow, it was a full day since the gas 
cloud went over. He decided to chance it. 

"You want to look out for any Boshies 
down there, sir," went on the Signaller. 
"With all these yarns they're fed with, about 
us killin' prisoners, you never know how 
they're goin' to take it, and whether they'll 
kamerad or make a fight for it." 

This also was true, and since a man crawl- 
ing down a steep and narrow stair made a 
target impossible for anyone shooting up 
the tunnel to miss, the Lieutenant began to 
wish himself out of the job. But something, 



OUR BATTERY'S PRISONER 249 

partly obstinacy, perhaps partly an unwill- 
ingness to back down after saying he would 
go, made him carry on. But before he started 
he took the precaution to push a sandbag off 
where it lay on the top step, to roll bumping 
and flopping down the stairs. If the Boche 
had any mind to shoot, he argued to himself, 
he'd almost certainly shoot at the sound, since 
it was too dark to see. The sandbag bumped 
down into silence, while the two stood strain- 
ing their ears for any sound. There was 
none. 

"You wait here," said the Lieutenant, and, 
with his cocked pistol in his hand, began to 
creep cautiously down the stairs. The pas- 
sage was narrow, and so low that he almost 
filled it, even although he was bent nearly 
double, and as he went slowly down, the dis- 
comforting thought again presented itself 
with renewed clearness, how impossible it 
would be for a shot up the steps to miss him, 
and again he very heartily wished himself 
well out of the job. 

It was a long stair, fully twenty-five to 
thirty feet underground he reckoned by the 



250 FRONT LINES 

time lie reached the foot, but he found him- 
self there and on roughly levelled ground 
with a good deal of relief. Evidently the 
Boche did not mean to show fight, at any rate, 
until he knew he was discovered. The Lieu- 
tenant knew no German, but made a try with 
one word, putting as demanding a tone into 
it as he could — "Kamerad!" He had his 
finger on the trigger and his pistol ready for 
action as he spoke, in case a pot-shot came in 
the direction of the sound of his voice. 

There was a dead, a very dead and creepy 
silence after his word had echoed and whis- 
pered away to stillness. He advanced a step 
or two, feeling carefully foot after foot, with 
his left hand outstretched and the pistol in his 
right still ready. The next thing was to try 
a light. This would certainly settle it one 
way or the other, because if anyone was there 
who meant to shoot, he'd certainly loose off 
at the light. 

The Lieutenant took out his torch and held 
it out from his body at full arm's length, to 
give an extra chance of the bullet missing 
him if it were shot at the light. He took a 



OUR BATTERY'S PRISONER 251 

long breath, flicked the light on in one quick 
flashing sweep round, and snapped it out 
again. There was no shot, no sound, no 
movement, nothing but that eerie stillness. 
The light had given him a glimpse of a long 
chamber vanishing into dimness. He ad- 
vanced very cautiously a few steps, switched 
the light on again, and threw the beam 
quickly round the walls. There was no sign 
of anyone, but he could see now that the long 
chamber curved round and out of sight. 

He switched the light off, stepped back to 
the stair foot, and called the Signaller down, 
hearing the clumping sound of the descending 
footsteps and the man's voice with a child- 
ish relief and sense of companionship. He 
explained the position, threw the light boldly 
on, and pushed along to where the room ran 
round the corner. Here again he found no 
sign of life, but on exploring right to the end 
of the room found the apparent explanation 
of his failure to discover the man he had 
been so sure of finding down there. The 
chamber was a long, narrow one, curved al- 
most to an S-shape, and at the far end was 



252 FRONT LINES 

another steep stair leading up to the trench. 

The man evidently had escaped that way. 

The dug-out was a large one, capable of 
holding, the Lieutenant reckoned, quarters 
for some thirty to forty men. It was hung 
all round with greatcoats swinging against 
the wall, and piled on shelves and hanging 
from hooks along wall and roof were packs, 
haversacks, belts, water-bottles, bayonets, and 
all sorts of equipment. There were dozens of 
the old leather "pickelhaube" helmets, and at 
sight of these the Lieutenant remembered an 
old compact made with the others in Mess 
that if one of them got a chance to pick up any 
helmets he should bring them in and divide 
up. 

"I'm going to take half a dozen of those 
helmets," he said, uncocking his pistol and 
pushing it into the holster. 

"Right, sir," said the Signaller. "I'd like 
one, too, and we might pick up some good 
sooveneers here." 

"Just as well, now we are here, to see 
what's worth having," said the Lieutenant. 



OUR BATTERY'S PRISONER 253 

"I'd rather like to find a decent pair of field- 
glasses, or a Mauser pistol.' ' 

He held the light while the Signaller hauled 
down kits, shook out packs, and rummaged 
round. For some queer reason they still 
spoke in subdued tones and made little noise, 
and suddenly the Lieutenant's ears caught a 
sound that made him snap his torch off and 
stand, as he confesses, with his skin pringling 
and his hair standing on end. 

"Did you hear anything?" he whispered. 
The Signaller had stiffened to stock stillness 
at his first instinctive start and the switching 
off of the light, and after a long pause whis- 
pered back, "No, sir; but mebbe you heard 
a rat." 

"Hold your breath and listen," whispered 
the Lieutenant. "I thought I heard a sort of 
choky cough." 

He heard the indrawn breath and then dead 
silence, and then again — once more the hair 
stirred on his scalp — plain and unmistakable, 
a sound of deep, slow breathing. ' ' Hear it 1 " 
he said very softly. " Sound of breathing," 
and "Yes, believe I do now," answered the 



254 FRONT LINES 

Signaller, after a pause. They stood there 
in the darkness for a long minute, the Lieu- 
tenant in his own heart cursing himself for 
a fool not to have thoroughly searched the 
place, to have made sure they would not be 
trapped. 

Especially he was a fool not to have looked 
behind those great coats which practically 
lined the walls and hung almost to the floor. 
There might be a dozen men hidden behind 
them ; there might be a door leading out into 
another dug-out ; there might be rifles or pis- 
tols covering them both at that second, fin- 
gers pressing on the triggers. He was, to 
put it bluntly, "scared stiff," as he says him- 
self, but the low voice of the Signaller brought 
him to the need of some action. "I can't 
hear it now, sir." 

"I'm going to turn the light on again," 
he said. "Have a quick look round, espe- 
cially for any men's feet showing under the 
coats round the wall." He switched his torch 
on again, ran it round the walls, once, swiftly, 
and then, seeing no feet under the coats, 
slowly and deliberately yard by yard. 



OUR BATTERY'S PRISONER 255 

"I'll swear I heard a man breathe,' ' he 
said positively, still peering round. "We'll 
search the place properly." 

In one corner near the stair foot lay a heap 
of clothing of some sort, with a great-coat 
spread wide over it. It caught the Lieuten- 
ant's eye and suspicions. Why should coats 
be heaped there — smooth — at full length? 

Without moving his eyes from the pile, he 
slid his automatic pistol out again, and 
slipped off the safety catch. "Keep the light 
on those coats," he said, softly, and tip-toed 
over to the pile, the pistol pointed, his finger 
close and tight on the trigger. His heart was 
thumping uncomfortably, and his nerves tight 
as fiddle-strings. He felt sure somehow that 
here was one man at least; and if he or any 
others in the dug-out meant fight on discov- 
ery, now, at any second, the first shot must 
come. 

He stooped over the coats and thrust the 
pistol forward. If a man was there, had a 
rifle or pistol ready pointed even, at least he, 
the Lieutenant, ought to get off a shot with 
equal, or a shade greater quickness. With his 



256 FRONT LINES 

left hand he picked up the coat corner, turned 
it back, and jerked the pistol forward and 
fairly under the nose of the head his move- 
ment had disclosed. "Lie still," he said, not 
knowing or caring whether the man under- 
stood or not, and for long seconds stood star- 
ing down on the white face and into the fright- 
ened eyes that looked unblinking up at him. 

"Kamerad," whispered the man, still as 
death under the threat of that pistol muzzle 
and the finger curled about the trigger. 
"Eight," said the Lieutenant. "Kamerad. 
Now, very gently, hands up," and again, 
slowly and clearly, "Hands up." The man 
understood, and the Lieutenant, watching like 
a hawk for a suspicious movement, for sign 
of a weapon appearing, waited while the 
hands came slowly creeping up and out from 
under the coat. His nerves were still on a 
raw edge — perhaps because long days of ob- 
serving in the front lines or with the battery 
while the guns are going their hardest in a 
heavy night-and-day bombardment are not 
conducive to steadiness of nerves — but, satis- 
fied at last that the man meant to play no 



OUR BATTERY'S PRISONER 257 

tricks, he flung the coat back off him, made 
him stand with his hands up, and ran his left 
hand over breast and pockets for feel of any 
weapon. That done, he stepped back with a 
sigh of relief. ' * Phew ! I believe I was just 
about as cold scared as he was," he said. 
"D'you speak English? No. Well, I sup- 
pose you'll never know how close to death 
youVe been the last minute." 

"I was a bit jumpy, too, sir," said the Sig- 
naller. "You never know, and it doesn't do 
to take chances wi' these chaps." 

"I wasn't," said the Lieutenant. "I be- 
lieve, if I'd seen a glint of metal as his hands 
came up, I'd have blown the top of his blessed 
head off. Pity he can't speak English." 

"Mans," said the prisoner, nodding his 
head towards the other end of the dug-out. 
"Oder mans." 

The Lieutenant whipped round with a 
startled exclamation. "What, more of 'em. 
G' Lord ! I've had about enough of this. But 
we'd better make all safe. Come on, Fritz; 
lead us to 'em. No monkey tricks, now," and 
he pushed his pistol close to the German's 



258 FRONT LINES 

flinching head. "Oder mans, kamerad, eh? 
Savvy V 

"Ge-wounded," said the prisoner, making 
signs to help his meaning. Under his guid- 
ance and with the pistol close to his ear all 
the time, they pulled aside some of the coats 
and found a man lying in a bunk hidden be- 
hind them. His head was tied up in a soak- 
ing bandage, the rough pillow was wet with 
blood, and by all the signs he was pretty badly 
hit. The Lieutenant needed no more than a 
glance to see the man was past being danger- 
ous, so, after making the prisoner give him 
a drink from a water-bottle, they went round 
the walls, and found it recessed all the way 
round with empty bunks. 

"What a blazing ass I was not to hunt 
round," said the Lieutenant, puffing another 
sigh of relief as they finished the jumpy busi- 
ness of pulling aside coat after coat, and 
never knowing whether the movement of any 
one of them was going to bring a muzzle-close 
shot from the blackness behind. "We must 
get out of this, though. It's growing late, 



OUR BATTERY'S PRISONER 259 

and the Battery will be wondering and think- 
ing we've got pipped on the way back." 

"What about these things, sir?" said the 
Signaller, pointing to the helmets and equip- 
ment they had hauled down. 

"Right," said the Lieutenant; "I'm cer- 
tainly not going without a souvenir of this 
entertainment. And I don't see why Brother 
Fritz oughtn't to make himself useful. Here, 
spread that big ground-sheet " 

So it came about that an hour after a pro- 
cession tramped back through the lines of the 
infantry and on to the gun lines — one Ger- 
man, with a huge ground-sheet, gathered at 
the corners and bulging with souvenirs, slung 
over his shoulder, the Lieutenant close be- 
hind him with an automatic at the ready, and 
the Signaller, wearing a huge grin, and with 
a few spare helmets slung to his haversack 
strap. 

"I thought I'd fetch him right along," the 
Lieutenant explained a little later to the O.C. 
Battery. "Seeing the Battery's never had a 
prisoner to its own cheek, I thought one might 
please 'em. And, besides, I wanted him to 



260 FRONT LINES 

lug the loot along. I've got full outfits for 
the mess this time, helmets and rifles and 
bayonets and all sorts.' ' 

The Battery were pleased. The Gunners 
don't often have the chance to take prisoners, 
and this one enjoyed all the popularity of a 
complete novelty. He was taken to the men's 
dug-out, and fed with a full assignment of 
rations, from bacon and tea to jam and cheese, 
while the men in turn cross-questioned him by 
the aid of an English-French-German phrase- 
book unearthed by some studious gunner. 

And when he departed under escort to be 
handed over and join the other prisoners, the 
Battery watched him go with complete regret. 

"To tell the truth, sir," the Sergeant- 
Major remarked to the Lieutenant, "the men 
would like to have kept him as a sort of Bat- 
tery Souvenir — kind of a cross between a 
mascot and a maid-of -all- work. Y'see, it's 
not often — in fact, I don't know that we're 
not the first Field Battery in this war to bring 
in a prisoner wi' arms, kit, and equipment 
complete. ' ' 

"The first battery," said the Lieutenant 



OUR BATTERY'S PRISONER 261 

fervently, "and when I think of that minute 
down a deep hole in pitch dark, hearing some- 
one breathe, and not knowing — well, we may 
be the first battery, and, as far as I'm con- 
cerned, we'll jolly well be the last." 



XV 

OUR TURN 

No. II platoon had had a bad mauling in their 
advance, and when they reached their " final 
objective line" there were left out of the 
ninety-odd men who had started, one ser- 
geant, one corporal, and fourteen men. But, 
with the rest of the line, they at once set to 
work to consolidate, to dig in, to fill the sand- 
bags each man carried, and to line the lip of 
a shell crater with them. Every man there 
knew that a counter-attack on their position 
was practically a certainty. They had not a 
great many bombs or very much ammunition 
left; they had been struggling through a 
wilderness of sticky mud and shell-churned 
mire all day, moving for all the world like 
flies across a half-dry fly-paper; they had 
been without food since dawn, when they had 
consumed the bully and biscuit of their iron 
" ration"; they were plastered with a casing 

262 



OUR TURN 263 

of chilly mud from head to foot; they were 
wet to the skin ; brain, body, and bone weary. 

But they went about the task of consolidat- 
ing with the greatest vigour they could bring 
their tired muscles to yield. They worried 
not at all about the shortage of bombs and 
ammunition, or lack of food, because they 
were all by now veterans of the new 
''planned" warfare, knew that every detail 
of re-supplying them with all they required 
had been fully and carefully arranged, that 
these things were probably even now on the 
way to them, that reinforcements and work- 
ing parties would be pushed up to the new 
line as soon as it was established. So the 
Sergeant was quite willing to leave all that 
to work out in its proper sequence, knew that 
his simple job was to hold the ground they 
had taken, and, therefore, bent all his mind 
to that work. 

But it suddenly appeared that the ground 
was not as completely taken as he had sup- 
posed. A machine-gun close at hand began 
to bang out a string of running reports; a 
stream of bullets hissed and whipped and 



264 FRONT LINES 

smacked the ground about him and his party. 
A spasmodic crackle of rifle-fire started again 
farther along the line at the same time. The 
Sergeant paid no heed to that. He and his 
men had flung down into cover, and dropped 
spades and trenching tools and sandbags, and 
whipped up their rifles to return the fire, at 
the first sound of the machine-gun. 

The Sergeant peered over the edge of the 
hole he was in, locating a bobbing head or 
two and the spurting flashes of the gun, and 
ducked down again. "They're in a shell-hole 
not more'n twenty, thirty yards away," he 
said rapidly. "Looks like only a handful. 

We'll rush 'em out. Here " and he went 

on into quick detailed orders for the rushing. 
Three minutes later he and his men swarmed 
out of their shelter and went forward at a 
scrambling run, the bombers flinging a shower 
of grenades ahead of them, the bayonet men 
floundering over the rough ground with 
weapons at the ready, the Sergeant well in 
the lead. 

Their sudden and purposeful rush must 
have upset the group of Germans, because the 



OUR TURN 265 

machine-gun fire for a moment became er- 
ratic, the muzzle jerked this way and that, 
the bullets whistled wide, and during that 
same vital moment no bombs were thrown by 
the Germans ; and when at last they did begin 
to come spinning out, most of them went too 
far, and the runners were well over them be- 
fore they had time to explode. In another 
moment the Sergeant leaped down fairly on 
top of the machine-gun, his bayonet thrust- 
ing through the gunner as he jumped. He 
shot a second and bayoneted a third, had his 
shoulder-strap blown away by a rifle at no 
more than muzzle distance, his sleeve and his 
haversack ripped open by a bayonet thrust. 

Then his men swarmed down into the wide 
crater, and in two minutes the fight was over. 
There were another few seconds of rapid fire 
at two or three of the Germans who had 
jumped out and run for their lives, and that 
finished the immediate performance. The 
Sergeant looked round, climbed from the hole, 
and made a hasty examination of the ground 
about them. 

" 'Tisn't as good a crater as we left," he 



266 FRONT LINES 

said, "an* it's 'way out front o' the line the 
others is digging, so we'd best get back. Get 
a hold o' that machine-gun an' all the spare 
ammunition you can lay hands on. We might 
find it come in useful. Good job we had the 
way a Fritz gun works shown us once. Come 
on." 

The men hastily collected all the ammuni- 
tion they could find and were moving back, 
when one of them, standing on the edge of the 
hole, remarked: "We got the top o' the 
ridge all right this time. Look at the open 
flat down there." 

The Sergeant turned and looked, and an ex- 
clamation broke from him at sight of the view 
over the ground beyond the ridge. Up to now 
that ground had been hidden by a haze of 
smoke from the bursting shells where our 
barrage was pounding steadily down. But 
for a minute the smoke had lifted or blown 
aside, and the Sergeant found himself look- 
ing down the long slope of a valley with gently 
swelling sides, looking right down on to the 
plain below the ridge. He scanned the lie of 
the ground rapidly, and in an instant had 



OUR TURN 267 

made up his mind. "Hold on there," he or- 
dered abruptly; "we'll dig in here instead. 
Sling that machine-gun back in here and 
point her out that way. You, Lees, get 'er 
into action, and rip out a few rounds just to 
see you got the hang o' it. Heave those dead 
Boches out; an', Corporal, you nip back with 
half a dozen men and fetch along the tools and 
sandbags we left there. Slippy now." 

The Corporal picked his half-dozen men 
and vanished, and the Sergeant whipped out 
a message-book and began to scribble a note. 
Before he had finished the rifle-fire began to 
rattle down along the line again, and he thrust 
the book in his pocket, picked up his rifle, and 
peered out over the edge of the hole. " There 
they go, Lees," he said suddenly. "Way 
along there on the left front. Pump it into 
'em. Don't waste rounds, though; we may 
need 'em for our own front in a minute. 
Come on, Corporal, get down in here. Looks 
like the start o' a counter-attack, though I 
don't see any of the blighters on our own 
front. Here, you two, spade out a cut into 
the next shell-hole there, so's to link 'em up. 



268 FRONT LINES 

Steady that gun, Lees ; don't waste 'em. Get 
on to your sandbag-fillin', the others, an' 
make a bit o ' a parapet this side. ' ' 

"We're a long ways out in front of the rest 
o' the line, ain't we?" said the Corporal. 

"Yes, I know," said the Sergeant. "I 
want to send a message back presently. This 
is the spot to hold, an' don't you forget it. 
Just look down — hullo, here's our barrage 
droppin' again. Well, it blots out the view, 
but it'll be blottin' out any Germs that try to 

push us ; so hit 'er up, the Gunners. But ' ' 

He broke off suddenly, and stared out into 
the writhing haze of smoke in front of them. 
"Here they come," he said sharply. "Now, 
Lees, get to it. Stand by, you bombers. 
Range three hundred the rest o' you, an' fire 
steady. Pick your marks. We got no rounds 
to waste. Now, then " 

The rifles began to bang steadily, then at 
a rapidly increasing rate as the fire failed to 
stop the advance, and more dim figures after 
figures came looming up hazily and emerging 
from the smoke. The machine-gunner held 
his fire until he could bring his sights on a 



OUR TURN 269 

little group, fired in short bursts with a side- 
ways twitch that sprayed the bullets out fan- 
wise as they went. The rifle-fire out to right 
and left of them, and almost behind them, 
swelled to a long, rolling beat with the tattoo 
of machine-guns rapping through it in gusts, 
the explosions of grenades rising and falling 
in erratic bursts. 

Farther back, the guns were hard at it 
again, and the shells were screaming and 
rushing overhead in a ceaseless torrent, the 
shrapnel to blink a star of flame from the 
heart of a smoke-cloud springing out in mid- 
air, the high explosive crashing down in pon- 
derous bellowings, up-flung vivid splashes of 
fire and spouting torrents of smoke, flying 
mud and earth clods. There were German 
shells, too, shrieking over, and adding their 
share to the indescribable uproar, crashing 
down along the line, and spraying out in cir- 
cles of fragments, the smaller bits whistling 
and whizzing viciously, the larger hurtling 
and humming like monster bees. 

"Them shells of ours is comin' down a 
sight too close to us, Sergeant," yelled the 



270 FRONT LINES 

Corporal, glancing up as a shrapnel shell 
cracked sharply almost overhead and sprayed 
its bullets, scattering and splashing along the 
wet ground out in front of them. 

"All right — it's shrap," the Sergeant 
yelled back. "Bullets is pitchin' well for- 
rad." 

The Corporal swore and ducked hastily 
from the whitt-wJiitt of a couple of bullets 
past their ears. ' ' Them was from behind us, ' ' 
he shouted. "We're too blazin' far out in 
front o' the line here. Wot's the good " 

"Here," said the Sergeant to a man who 
staggered back from the rough parapet, right 
hand clutched on a blood-streaming left shoul- 
der, "whip a field dressin' round that, an' try 
an' crawl back to them behind us. Find an 
officer, if you can, an' tell him we're out in 
front of 'im. An' tell 'im I'm going to hang 
on to the position we have here till my blanky 
teeth pull out." 

"Wot's the good " began the Corporal 

again, ceasing fire to look round at the Ser- 
geant. 

"Never mind the good now," said the Ser- 



OUR TURN 271 

geant shortly, as he recharged his magazine. 
"You'll see after — if we live long enough." 
He levelled and aimed his rifle. u An' we 
won't do that if you stand there" — (he fired 
a shot and jerked the breech open) — "jawin' 
instead" — (he slammed the breech-bolt home 
and laid cheek to stock again) — "o' shoot- 
in' " ; and he snapped another shot. 

On their own immediate front the attack 
slackened, and died away, but along the line 
a little the Sergeant's group could see a 
swarm of men charging in. The Sergeant im- 
mediately ordered the machine-gun and every 
rifle to take the attackers in enfilade. For the 
next few minutes every man shot as fast as 
he could load and pull trigger, and the cap- 
tured machine-gun banged and spat a steady 
stream of fire. The Sergeant helped until he 
saw the attack dying out again, its remnants 
fading into the smoke haze. Then he pulled 
his book out, and wrote his message: "Am 
holding crater position with captured ma- 
chine-gun and eight men of No. 2 Platoon. 
Good position, allowing enfilade fire on at- 
tack, and with command of farther slopes. 



272 FRONT LINES 

Urgently require men, ammunition, and 
bombs, but will ,hold out to the finish. ' ' 

He sent the note back by a couple of 
wounded men, and set his party about 
strengthening their position as far as pos- 
sible. In ten minutes another attack com- 
menced, and the men took up their rifles and 
resumed their steady fire. But this time the 
field-grey figures pressed in, despite the pour- 
ing fire and the pounding shells, and, although 
they were held and checked and driven to tak- 
ing cover in shell-holes on the Sergeant 's im- 
mediate front, they were within grenade- 
throwing distance there, and the German ' ' po- 
tato-masher" bombs and the British Mills' 
began to twirl and curve over to and fro> and 
burst in shattering detonations. Three more 
of the Sergeant's party were wounded inside 
as many minutes, but every man who could 
stand on his feet, well or wounded, rose at 
the Sergeant's warning yell to meet the rush 
of about a dozen men who swung aside from 
a large group that had pressed in past their 
flank. The rush was met by a few quick shots, 
but the ammunition for the machine-gun had 



OUR TURN 273 

run out, and of bombs even there were only a 
few left. So, in the main, the rush was met 
with the bayonet — and killed with it. The 
Sergeant still held his crater, but now he had 
only two unwounded men left to help him. 

The Corporal, nursing a gashed cheek and 
spitting mouthfuls of blood, shouted at him 
again, " Y' ain't go in' to try 'n hold on longer, 
surely. We've near shot the last round 
away. ' ' 

"I'll hold it," said the Sergeant grimly, 
"if I have to do it myself wi' my bare fists." 

But he cast anxious looks behind, in hope of 
a sight of reinforcements, and knew that if 
they did not come before another rush he and 
his party were done. His tenacity had its due 
reward. Help did come — men and ammuni- 
tion and bombs and a couple of machine-guns 
— and not three minutes before the launching 
of another attack. An officer was with the 
party, and took command, but he was killed 
inside the first minute, and the Sergeant again 
took hold. 

Again the attack was made all along the 
line, and again, under the ferocious fire of the 



274 FRONT LINES 

reinforced line, it was beaten back. The line 
had at the last minute been hinged outward 
behind the Sergeant, and so joined up with 
him that it formed a sharpish angle, with the 
Sergeant's crater at its point. The enfilade 
fire of this forward-swung portion and the 
two machine-guns in the crater did a good 
deal to help cut down the main attack. 

When it was well over, and the attack had 
melted away, the Captain of the Sergeant's 
Company pushed up into the crater. 

' ' Who 's in charge here ? " he asked. ' ' You, 
Sergeant? Your note came back, and we sent 
you help ; but you were taking a long risk out 
here. Didn't you know you had pushed out 
beyond your proper point? And why didn't 
you retire when you found yourself in the 
air?" 

The Sergeant turned and pointed out where 
the thinning smoke gave a view of the wide 
open flats of the plain beyond the ridge. 

"I got a look o' that, sir," he said, "and I 
just thought a commanding position like this 
was worth sticking a lot to hang to." 

' ' Jove ! and you were right, ' ' said the Cap- 



OUR TURN 275 

tain, looking gloatingly on the flats, and went 
on to add other and warmer words of praise. 

But it was to his corporal, a little later, 
that the Sergeant really explained his hang- 
ing on to the point. 

"Look at it!" he said enthusiastically; 
"look at the view you get!" 

The Corporal viewed dispassionately for a 
moment the dreary expanse below, the shell- 
churned morass and mud, wandering rivulets 
and ditches, shell-wrecked fragments of farms 
and buildings, the broken, bare-stripped poles 
of trees. 

"Bioomin' great, ain't it?" he mumbled 
disgustedly, through his bandaged jaws. 
"Fair beautiful. Makes you think you'd like 
to come 'ere after the war an' build a 'ouse, 
an' sit lookin' out on it always — I don't 
think." 

"Exactly what I said the second I saw it," 
said the Sergeant, and chuckled happily. 
"Only my house 'd be a nice little trench an' 
a neat little dug-out, an' be for duration o' 
war. Think o' it, man — just think o' this 
winter, with us up here along the ridge, an' 



276 FRONT LINES 

Fritz down in his trenches below there, up to 
the middle in mud. Him cur sin' Creation, 
and strugglin' to pump his trenches out; and 
us sitting nicely up here in the dry, snipin' 
down in enfilade along his trench, and pump- 
in ' the water out of our trenches down on to 
the flat to drown him out." 

The Sergeant chuckled again, slapped his 
hands together. "I've been havin' that side 
of it back in the salient there for best part o* 
two years, off and on. Fritz has been up top, 
keepin' his feet dry and watchin' us gettin' 
shelled an' shot up an' minnie-werfered to 
glory — squattin' up here, smokin' his pipe 
an' takin' a pot-shot at us, and watchin' us 
through his field-glasses, just as he felt like. 
And now it's our turn. Don't let me hear 
anybody talk about drivin' the Hun back for 
miles from here. I don't want him to go 
back ; I want him to sit down there the whole 
darn winter, freezin' an' drownin' to death 
ten times a day. Fritz isn't go in' to like that 
— not any. I am, an' that's why I hung like 
grim death to this look-out point. This is 
where we come in; this is our turn!" 



XVI 

ACCORDING TO PLAN 

"Ratty" Travees dropped his load with a 
grunt of satisfaction, squatted down on the 
ground, and tilting his shrapnel helmet back, 
mopped a streaming brow. As the line in 
which he had moved dropped to cover, an- 
other line rose out of the ground ahead of 
them and commenced to push forward. Some 
distance beyond, a wave of kilted Highlanders 
pressed on at a steady walk up to within about 
fifty paces of the string of flickering, jump- 
ing white patches that marked the edge of the 
"artillery barrage." 

Ratty Travers and the others of the ma- 
chine-gun company being in support had a 
good view of the lines attacking ahead of 
them. 

"Them Jocks is goin 7 along nicely," said 
the man who had dropped beside Ratty. 

Ratty grunted scornfully. "Beautiful," he 

277 



278 FRONT LINES 

said. "An' we're doin' wonderful well our- 
selves. I never remember gettin' over the No 
Man's Land so easy, or seem' a trench took 
so quick an' simple in my life as this one 
we're in; or seein' a 'tillery barrage move so 
nice an' even and steady to time." 

" You've seed a lot, Ratty," said his com- 
panion. "But you ain't seed everything." 

"That's true," said Ratty. "I've never 
seen a lot o' grown men playin' let's-pretend 
like a lot of school kids. Just look at that 
fool wi' the big drum, Johnny." 

Johnny looked and had to laugh. The man 
with the big drum was lugging it off at the 
double away from the kilted line, and strung 
out to either side of him there raced a scat- 
tered line of men armed with sticks and 
biscuit-tins and empty cans. Ratty and his 
companions were clothed in full fighting kit 
and equipment, and bore boxes of very real 
ammunition. In the "trenches" ahead of 
them, or moving over the open, were other 
men similarly equipped ; rolling back to them 
came a clash and clatter, a dull prolonged 
boom-boom-boom. In every detail, so far as 



ACCORDING TO PLAN 279 

the men were concerned, an attack was in full 
swing; but there was no yell and crash of 
falling shells, no piping whistle and sharp 
crack of bullets, no deafening, shaking thun- 
der of artillery (except that steady boom- 
boom), no shell-scorched strip of battered 
ground. The warm sun shone on trim green 
fields, on long twisting lines of flags and tapes 
strung on sticks, on ranks of perspiring men 
in khaki with rifles and bombs and machine- 
guns and ammunition and stretchers and all 
the other accoutrements of battle. There 
were no signs of death or wounds, none of the 
horror of war, because this was merely a 
"practice attack," a full-dress rehearsal of 
the real thing, full ten miles behind the front. 
The trenches were marked out by flags and 
tapes, the artillery barrage was a line of men 
hammering biscuit-tins and a big drum, and 
waving fluttering white flags. The kilts came 
to a halt fifty paces short of them, and a mo- 
ment later, the * 'barrage" sprinted off ahead 
one or two score yards, halted, and fell to 
banging and battering tins and drum and 
waving flags, while the kilts solemnly moved 



280 FRONT LINES 

on after them, to halt again at their measured 
distance until the next "lift" of the "bar- 
rage." It looked sheer child's play, a silly 
elaborate game; and yet there was no sign 
of laughter or play about the men taking part 
in it — except on the part of Ratty Travers. 
Ratty was openly scornful. "Ready there," 
said a sergeant rising and pocketing the note- 
book he had been studying. ' * We Ve only five 
minutes in this trench. And remember you 
move half -right when you leave here, an' the 
next line o' flags is the sunk road wi' six 
machine-gun emplacements along the edge." 

Ratty chuckled sardonically. "I 'ope that 
in the real thing them machine-guns won't 
'ave nothing to say to us movin' half -right 
across their front," he said. 

"They've been strafed out wi' the guns," 
said Johnny simply, "an' the Jocks 'as 
mopped up any that's left. We was told that 
yesterday." 

"I dare say," retorted Ratty. "An' I 
hopes the Huns 'ave been careful instructed 
in the same. It 'ud be a pity if they went an' 
did anything to spoil all the plans. But they 



ACCORDING TO PLAN 281 

wouldn't do that. Oh, no, of course not — I 
don't think!" 

He had a good deal more to say in the same 
strain — with especially biting criticism on the 
"artillery barrage" and the red-faced big 
drummer who played lead in it— during the 
rest of the practice and at the end of it when 
they lay in their "final objective" and rested, 
smoking and cooling off with the top buttons 
of tunics undone, while the officers gathered 
round the CO. and listened to criticism and 
made notes in their books. 

"I'll admit," he said, "they might plan out 
the trenches here the same as the ones we're 
to attack from. It's this rot o' layin' out the 
Fritz trenches gets me. An' this attack — it's 
about as like a real attack as my gasper's like 
a machine-gun. Huh ! Wi' one bloke clockin' 
you on a stop-watch, an' another countin' the 
paces between the trenches — Boche trenches a 
mile behind their front line, mind you — an' 
another whackin' a big drum like a kid in a 
nursery. An' all this 'Go steady here, this is 
a sharp rise,' or 'hurry this bit, 'cos most 
likely it'll be open to enfiladin' machine-gun 



282 FRONT LINES 

fire,' or 'this here's the sunk road wi' six 
machine-gun emplacements. ' Huh! Plunky 
rot I calls it. ' ' 

The others heard him in silence or with 
mild chaffing replies. Ratty was new to this 
planned-attack game, of course, but since he 
had been out and taken his whack of the early- 
days, had been wounded, and home, and only 
lately had come out again, he was entitled to 
a certain amount of excusing. 

Johnny summed it up for them. "We've 
moved a bit since the Noove Chapelle days, 
you know," he said. "You didn't have no 
little lot like this then, did you?" jerking his 
head at the bristling line of their machine- 
guns. "An' you didn't have creepin' bar- 
rages, an' more shells than you could fire, eh? 
Used to lose seventy an' eighty per cent, o' 
the battalion's strength goin' over the bags 
them days, didn't you? Well, we've changed 
that a bit, thank Gawd. You'll see the differ 
presently." 

Later on Ratty had to admit a considerable 
"differ" and a great improvement on old 
ways. He and his company moved up towards 



ACCORDING TO PLAN 283 

the front leisurely and certainly, without 
haste and without confusion, having the or- 
ders detailed overnight for the next day's 
march, finding meals cooked and served reg- 
ularly, travelling by roads obviously known 
and " detailed" for them, coming at night to 
camp or billet places left vacant for them 
immediately before, finding everything 
planned and prepared, foreseen and provided 
for. But, although he admitted all this, he 
stuck to his belief that beyond the front line 
this carefully-planned moving must cease 
abruptly. ''It'll be the same plunky old 
scramble an ' scrap, I '11 bet, ' ' he said. * ' We '11 
see then if all the Fritz trenches is just where 
we've fixed 'em, an' if we runs to a regular 
time-table and follows the laid-down route 
an ' first-turn-to -the-right-an '-mind-the-step- 
performance we've been practisin'." 

But it was as they approached the fighting 
zone, and finally when they found themselves 
installed in a support trench on the morning 
of the Push that Ratty came to understand 
the full difference between old battles and 
this new style. For days on end he heard 



284 FRONT LINES 

such gun-fire as he had never dreamed of, 
heard it continue without ceasing or slacken- 
ing day and night. By day he saw the distant 
German ground veiled in a drifting fog-bank 
of smoke, saw it by night starred with wink- 
ing and spurting gusts of flame from our 
high-explosives. He walked or lay on a 
ground that quivered and trembled under the 
unceasing shock of our guns' discharges, 
covered his eyes at night to shut out the flash- 
ing lights that pulsed and throbbed constantly 
across the sky. On the last march that had 
brought them into the trenches they had 
passed through guns and guns and yet again 
guns, first the huge monsters lurking hidden 
well back and only a little in advance of the 
great piles of shells and long roofed sidings 
crammed with more shells, then farther on 
past other monsters only less in comparison 
with those they had seen before, on again 
past whole batteries of 60-pounders and ' ' six- 
inch" tucked away in corners of woods or 
amongst broken houses, and finally up 
through the field guns packed close in every 
corner that would more or less hide a battery, 



ACCORDING TO PLAN 285 

or brazenly lined up in the open. They 
tramped down the long street of a mined vil- 
lage — a street that was no more than a 
cleared strip of cobble-stones bordered down 
its length on both sides by the piled or scat- 
tered heaps of rubble and brick that had once 
been rows of houses — with a mad chorus of 
guns roaring and cracking and banging in 
numberless scores about them, passed over 
the open behind the trenches to find more 
guns ranged battery after battery, and all 
with sheeting walls of flame jumping and 
flashing along their fronts. They found and 
settled into their trench with this unbroken 
roar of fire bellowing in their ears, a roar so 
loud and long that it seemed impossible to in- 
crease it. When their watches told them it 
was an hour to the moment they had been 
warned was the "zero hour," the fixed mo- 
ment of the attack, the sound of the gun-fire 
swelled suddenly and rose to a pitch of fury 
that eclipsed all that had gone before. The 
men crouched in their trench listening in 
awed silence, and as the zero hour approached 
Batty clambered and stood where he could 



286 FRONT LINES 

look over the edge towards the German lines. 
A sergeant shouted at him angrily to get 
down, and hadn't he heard the order to keep 
under cover 1 Ratty dropped back beside the 
others. "Lumme," he said disgustedly, "I 
dunno wot this bloomin' war's comin' to. Or- 
ders, orders, orders ! You mustn't get plunky 
well killed nowadays, unless you 'as orders 
to." 

"There they go," said Johnny suddenly, 
and all strained their ears for the sound of 
rattling rifle-fire that came faintly through 
the roll of the guns. "An' here they come," 
said Ratty quickly, and all crouched low and 
listened to the rising roar of a heavy shell 
approaching, the heavy cr-r-rump of its fall. 
A message x passed along, "Ready there. 
Move in five minutes." And at five minutes 
to the tick, they rose and began to pass along 
the trench. 

"Know where we are, Ratty?" asked 
Johnny. Ratty looked about him. "How 
should I know?" he shouted back, "I was 
never 'ere before." 

"You oughter," returned Johnny. "This 



ACCORDING TO PLAN 287 

is the line we started from back in practice 
attack — the one that was taped out along by 
the stream. ' ' 

"I'm a fat lot better for knowin' it too," 
said Batty sarcastically, and trudged on. 
They passed slowly forward and along 
branching trenches until they came at last to 
the front line, from which v after a short rest, 
they climbed and hoisted their machine-guns 
out into the open. From here for the first 
time they could see something of the battle- 
ground; but could see nothing of the battle 
except a drifting haze of smoke, and, just 
disappearing into it, a shadowy line of fig- 
ures. The thunder of the guns continued, and 
out in front they could hear now the crackle 
of rifle fire, the sharp detonations of gren- 
ades. There were far fewer shells falling 
about the old " neutral ground" than Ratty 
had expected, and even comparatively few 
bullets piping over and past them. They 
reached the tumbled wreckage of shell-holes 
and splintered planks that marked what had 
been the front German line, clambered 
through this, and pushed on stumbling and 



288 FRONT LINES 

climbing in and out the shell-holes that rid- 
dled the ground. "Where's the Buffs that's 
supposed to be in front o' us," shouted 
Eatty, and ducked hastily into a deep shell- 
hole at the warning screech of an approach- 
ing shell. It crashed down somewhere near 
and a shower of dirt and earth rained down 
on him. He climbed out. ' ' Should be ahead 
about a here's some o' them now wi' pris- 
oners," said Johnny. They had a hurried 
glimpse of a huddled group of men in grey 
with their hands well up over their heads, 
running, stumbling, half falling and recover- 
ing, but always keeping their hands hoisted 
well up. There may have been a full thirty 
of them, and they were being shepherded back 
by no more than three or four men with bay- 
onets gleaming on their rifles. They dis- 
appeared into the haze, and the machine- 
gunners dropped down into a shallow twist- 
ing depression and pressed on along it. 
' ' This is the communication trench that used 
to be taped out along the edge o' that corn- 
field in practice attack," said Johnny, when 
they halted a moment. "Trench?" said 



ACCORDING TO PLAN 289 

Ratty, glancing along it, "Strewth!" The 
trench was gone, was no more than a wide 
shallow depression, a tumbled gutter a foot 
or two below the level of the ground; and 
even the gutter in places was lost in a patch 
of broken earth-heaps and craters. It was 
best traced by the dead that lay in it, by the 
litter of steel helmets, rifles, bombs, gas- 
masks, bayonets, water-bottles, arms and 
equipment of every kind strewed along it. 

By now Ratty had lost all sense of direc- 
tion or location, but Johnny at his elbow was 
always able to keep him informed. Ratty at 
first refused to accept his statements, but was 
convinced against all argument, and it was 
always clear from the direct and unhesitating 
fashion in which they were led that those in 
command knew where they were and where to 
go. "We should pass three trees along this 
trench somewhere soon," Johnny would say, 
and presently, sure enough, they came to one 
stump six foot high and two splintered butts 
just showing above the earth. They reached 
a wide depression, and Johnny pointed and 
shouted, "The sunk road," and looking round, 



290 FRONT LINES 

pointed again to some whitish-grey masses 
broken, overturned, almost buried in the tum- 
bled earth, the remains of concrete machine- 
gun emplacements which Ratty remembered 
had been marked somewhere back there on 
the practice ground by six marked boards. 
"Six," shouted Johnny, and grinned triumph- 
antly at the doubter. 

The last of Ratty 's doubts as to the cor- 
rectness of battle plans, even of the German 
lines, vanished when they came to a bare 
stretch of ground which Johnny reminded him 
was where they had been warned they would 
most likely come under enfilading machine- 
gun fire. They halted on the edge of this 
patch to get their wind, and watched some 
stretcher-bearers struggling to cross and a 
party of men digging furiously to make a line 
of linked-up shell-holes, while the ground 
about them jumped and splashed under the 
hailing of bullets. 

"Enfiladin' fire," said Ratty. " Should 
think it was too. "Why the 'ell don't they 
silence the guns doin' it?" 

"Supposed to be in a clump o' wood over 



ACCORDING TO PLAN 291 

there,' ' said Johnny. "And it ain't due to 
be took for an hour yet." 

The word passed along, and they rose and 
began to cross the open ground amongst the 
raining bullets. "There's our objective," 
shouted Johnny as they ran. "That rise — 
come into action there. ' ' Ratty stared aghast 
at the rise, and at the spouting columns of 
smoke and dirt that leaped from it under a 
steady fall of heavy shells. "That," he 
screeched back, "Gorstrewth. Good-bye us 
then." But he ran on as well as he could 
under the weight of the gun on his shoulder. 
They were both well out to the left of their 
advancing line and Ratty was instinctively 
flinching from the direct route into those 
gusts of flame and smoke. "Keep up," 
yelled Johnny. "Remember the trench. 
You'll miss the end of it." Ratty recalled 
vaguely the line of flags and tape that had 
wriggled over the practice ground to the last 
position where they had halted each day and 
brought their guns into mimic action. He 
knew he would have slanted to the right to 
hit the trench end there, so here he also 



292 FRONT LINES 

slanted right and presently stumbled thank- 
fully into the broken trench, and pushed 
along it up the rise. At the top he found him- 
self looking over a gentle slope, the foot of 
which was veiled in an eddying mist of smoke. 
A heavy shell burst with a terrifying crash 
and sent him reeling from the shock. He sat 
down with a bump, shaken and for the mo- 
ment dazed, but came to himself with John- 
ny's voice bawling in his ear, ' ' Come on, man, 
come on. Hurt? Quick then — yergun." He 
staggered up and towards an officer whom he 
could see waving frantically at him and open- 
ing and shutting his mouth in shouts that 
were lost in the uproar. He thrust forward 
and into a shell-hole beside Johnny and the 
rest of the gun detachment. His sergeant 
jumped down beside them shouting and point- 
ing out into the smoke wreaths. "See the 
wood . . . six hundred . . . lay on the 

ground-line — they're counter-attack " He 

stopped abruptly and fell sliding in a tumbled 
heap down the crater side on top of the gun. 
The officer ran back mouthing unheard angry 
shouts at them again. Ratty was getting 



ACCORDING TO PLAN 293 

angry himself. How could a man get into 
action with a fellow falling all over his gun 
like that? They dragged the sergeant's 
twitching body clear and Ratty felt a pang of 
regret for his anger. He 'd been a good chap, 
the sergeant. . . . But anger swallowed him 
again as he dragged his gun clear. It was 
drenched with blood. l ' Nice bizness, ' ' he said 
savagely, ' ' if my breech action 's clogged up. ' ' 
A loaded belt slipped into place and he 
brought the gun into action with a savage 
jerk on the loading lever, looked over his 
sights, and layed them on the edge of the 
wood he could just dimly see through the 
smoke. He could see nothing to fire at — 
cursed smoke was so thick — but the others 
were firing hard — must be something there. 
He pressed his thumbs on the lever and his 
gun began to spurt a stream of fire and lead, 
the belt racing and clicking through, the 
breech clacking smoothly, the handles jarring 
sharply in his fingers. 

The hillock was still under heavy shell-fire. 
They had been warned in practice attack that 
there would probably be shell-fire, and here 



294 FRONT LINES 

it was, shrieking, crashing, tearing the 
wrecked ground to fresh shapes of wreckage, 
spouting in fountains of black smoke and 
earth, whistling and hurtling in jagged frag- 
ments, hitting solidly and bursting in whirl- 
winds of flame and smoke. Ratty had no 
time to think of the shells. He strained his 
eyes over the sights on the foot of the dimly 
seen trees, held his gun steady and spitting 
its jets of flame and lead, until word came to 
him, somehow or from somewhere to cease 
firing. The attack had been wiped out, he 
heard said. He straightened his bent shoul- 
ders and discovered with immense surprise 
that one shoulder hurt, that his jacket was 
soaked with blood. 

''Nothing more than a good Blighty one," 
said the bearer who tied him up. "Keep you 
home two-three months mebbe." 

"Good enough," said Ratty. "I'll be back 
in time to see the finish," and lit a cigarette 
contentedly. 

Back in the Aid Post later he heard from 
one of the Jocks who had been down there in 
the smoke somewhere between the machine- 



ACCORDING TO PLAN 295 

guns and the wood, that the front line was 
already well consolidated. He heard too that 
the German counter-attack had been cut to 
pieces, and that the open ground before our 
new line front was piled with their dead. 
"You fellies was just late enough wi' your 
machine-guns," said the Highlander. "In 
anither three-fower meenits they'd a been 
right on top o' us." 

"Late be blowed," said Ratty. "We was 
on the right spot exackly at the programme 
time o' the plan. We'd rehearsed the dash 
thing an' clocked it too often for me not to 
be sure o' that. We was there just when we 
was meant to be, an' that was just when they 
knew we'd be wanted. Whole plunky attack 
went like clockwork, far's our bit o' the plans 
went." 

But it was two days later and snug in bed 
in a London hospital, when he had read the 
dispatches describing the battle, that he had 
his last word on "planned attacks." 

"Lumme," he said to the next bed, "I likes 
this dispatch of ole 'Indenburg's. Good mile 
an' a half we pushed 'em back, an* held all 



296 FRONT LINES 

the ground, an' took 6,000 prisoners; an', 
says 'Indenburg, ' the British attack was com- 
pletely repulsed . . . only a few crater posi- 
tions were abandoned by us according to 
plan.' " 

He dropped the paper and grinned. "Ae- 
cordin' to plan," he said. "That's true 
enough. But 'e forgot to say it was the same 
as it always is — accordin' to the plan that was 
made by 'Aig an' us." 



XVII 

DOWN IN HUNLAND 

It was cold — bitterly, bitingly, fiercely cold. 
It was also at intervals wet, and misty, and 
snowy, as the 'plane ran by turns through 
various clouds ; but it was the cold that was 
uppermost in the minds of pilot and observer 
as they flew through the darkness. They were 
on a machine of the night-bombing squadron, 
and the " Night-Fliers " in winter weather 
take it more or less as part of the night's 
work that they are going to be out in cold and 
otherwise unpleasant weather conditions ; but 
the cold this night was, as the pilot put it in 
his thoughts, "over the odds." 

It was the Night-Fliers' second trip over 
Hunland. The first trip had been a short one 
to a near objective, because at the beginning 
of the night the weather looked too doubtful 
to risk a long trip. But before they had come 
back the weather had cleared, and the Squad- 

297 



298 FRONT LINES 

ron Commander, after full deliberation, had 
decided to chance the long trip and bomb a 
certain place which he knew it was urgent 
should be damaged as much and as soon as 
possible. 

All this meant that the Fliers had the short- 
est possible space of time on the ground be- 
tween the two trips. Their machines were 
loaded up with fresh supplies of bombs just 
as quickly as it could be done, the petrol and 
oil tanks refilled, expended rounds of ammu- 
nition for the machine-guns replaced. Then, 
one after another, the machines steered out 
into the darkness across the 'drome ground 
towards a twinkle of light placed to guide 
them, wheeled round, gave the engine a pre- 
liminary whirl, steadied it down, opened her 
out again, and one by one at intervals lum- 
bered off at gathering speed, and soared off 
up into the darkness. 

The weather held until the objective was 
reached, although glances astern showed om- 
inous clouds banking up and darkening the 
sky behind them. The bombs were loosed and 
seen to strike in leaping gusts of flame on the 



DOWN IN HUNLAND 299 

ground below, while searchlights stabbed up 
into the sky and groped round to find the raid- 
ers, and the Hun "Archies" spat sharp 
tongues of flame up at them. Several times 
the shells burst near enough to be heard 
above the roar of the engine; but one after 
another the Night Fliers "dropped the eggs" 
and wheeled and drove off for home, the ob- 
servers leaning over and picking up any vis- 
ible speck of light or the flickering spurts of 
a machine-gun's fire and loosing off quick 
bursts of fire at these targets. But every 
pilot knew too well the meaning of those bank- 
ing clouds to the west, and was in too great 
haste to get back to spend time hunting tar- 
gets for their machine-guns ; and each opened 
his engine out and drove hard to reach the 
safety of our own lines before thick weather 
could catch and bewilder them. 

The leaders had escaped fairly lightly — 
"Atcha" and "Beta" having only a few 
wides to dodge; but their followers kept 
catching it hotter and hotter. 

The "Osca" was the last machine to ar- 
rive at the objective and deliver her bombs 



300 FRONT LINES 

and swing for home, and because she was the 
last she came in for the fully awakened de- 
fence's warmest welcome, and wheeled with 
searchlights hunting for her, with Archie 
shells coughing round, with machine-guns 
spitting fire and their bullets zizz-izz-ipping 
up past her, with "flaming onions'' curving 
up in streaks of angry red fire and falling 
blazing to earth again. A few of the bullets 
ripped and rapped viciously through the fab- 
ric of her wings, but she suffered no further 
damage, although the fire was hot enough and 
close enough to make her pilot and observer 
breathe sighs of relief as they droned out 
into the darkness and left all the devilment 
of fire and lights astern. 

The word of the Night-Fliers ' raid had evi- 
dently gone abroad through the Hun lines 
however, and as they flew west they could see 
searchlight after light switching and scything 
through the dark in search of them. Red- 
mond, or "Reddie," the pilot, was a good 
deal more concerned over the darkening sky, 
and the cold that by now was piercing to his 
bones, than he was over the searchlights or 



DOWN IN HUNLAND 301 

the chance of running into further Archie fire. 
He lifted the "Osca" another 500 feet as he 
flew, and drove on with his eyes on the com- 
pass and on the cloud banks ahead in turn. 

Flying conditions do not lend themselves 
to conversation between pilot and observer, 
but once or twice the two exchanged remarks, 
very brief and boiled-down remarks, on their 
position and the chances of reaching the lines 
before they ran into "the thick." That a 
thick was coming was painfully clear to both. 
The sky by now was completely darkened, and 
the earth below was totally and utterly lost 
to sight. The pilot had his compass, and his 
compass only, left to guide him, and he kept 
a very close and attentive eye on that and his 
instrument denoting height. Their bombing 
objective had been a long way behind the Ger- 
man lines, but Reddie and "Walk" Jones, the 
observer, were already beginning to congrat- 
ulate themselves on their nearness to the lines 
and the probability of escaping the storm, 
when the storm suddenly whirled down upon 
them. 

It came without warning, although warn- 



302 FRONT LINES 

ing would have been of little use, since they 
could do nothing but continue to push for 
home. One minute they were flying, in dark- 
ness it is true, but still in a clear air; the 
next they were simply barging blindly 
through a storm of rain which probably 
poured straight down to earth, but which to 
them, flying at some scores of miles per hour, 
was driving level and with the force of whip 
cuts full in their faces. Both pilot and ob- 
server were blinded. The water cataracting 
on their goggles cut off all possibility of 
sight, and Eeddie could not even see the com- 
pass in front of him or the gleam of light 
that illuminated it. He held the machine as 
steady and straight on her course as instinct 
and a sense of direction would allow him, and 
after some minutes they passed clear of the 
rain-storm. Everything was streaming wet — 
their faces, their goggles, their clothes, and 
everything they touched in the machine. Eed- 
die mopped the wet off his compass and 
peered at it a moment, and then with an an- 
gry exclamation pushed rudder and joy-stick 
over and swung round to a direction fairly 



DOWN IN HUNLAND 303 

opposite to the one they had been travelling. 
Apparently he had turned completely round 
in the minutes through the rain^-once round 
at least, and Heaven only knew how many 
more times. 

They flew for a few minutes in compara- 
tively clear weather, and then, quite sud- 
denly, they whirled into a thick mist cloud. 
At first both Eeddie and "Walk" thought it 
was snow, so cold was the touch of the wet 
on their faces; but even when they found it 
was no more than a wet mist cloud they were 
little better off, because again both were com- 
pletely blinded so far as seeing how or where 
they were flying went. Eeddie developed a 
sudden fear that he was holding the ma- 
chine's nose down, and in a quick revulsion 
pulled the joy-stick back until he could feel 
her rear and swoop upwards. He was left 
with a sense of feeling only to guide him. He 
could see no faintest feature of the instru- 
ment-board in front of him, had to depend en- 
tirely on his sense of touch and feel and in- 
stinct to know whether the "Osca" was on a 



304 FRONT LINES 

level keel, flying forward, or up or down, or 
lying right over on either wing tip. 

The mist cleared, or they flew clear of it, 
as suddenly as they had entered it, and Red- 
die found again that he had lost direction, 
was flying north instead of west. He brought 
the 'bus round again and let her drop until 
the altimeter showed a bare two hundred feet 
above the ground and peered carefully down 
for any indication of his whereabouts. He 
could see nothing — blank nothing, below, or 
above, or around him. Pie lifted again to the 
thousand-foot mark and drove on towards the 
west. He figured that they ought to be com- 
ing somewhere near the lines now, but better 
be safe than sorry, and he'd get well clear of 
Hunland before he chanced coming down. 

Then the snow shut down on them. If they 
had been blinded before, they were doubly 
blind now. It was not only that the whirling 
flakes of snow shut out any sight in front of 
or around them; it drove clinging against 
their faces, their glasses, their bodies, and 
froze and was packed hard by the wind of 
their own speed as they flew. And it was cold, 



DOWN IN HUNLAND 305 

bone- and marrow-piercing cold. Eeddie lost 
all sense of direction again, all sense of 
whether he was flying forward, or up or down, 
right side or wrong side up. He even lost 
any sense of time ; and when the scud cleared 
enough for him to make out the outline of his 
instruments he could not see the face of his 
clock, his height or speed recorders, or any- 
thing else, until he had scraped the packed 
snow off them. 

But this time, according to the compass, he 
was flying west and in the right direction. 
So much he just had time to see when they 
plunged again into another whirling smother 
of fine snow. They flew through that for min- 
utes which might have been seconds or hours 
for all the pilot knew. He could see nothing 
through his clogged goggles, that blurred up 
faster than he could wipe them clear ; he could 
hear nothing except, dully, the roar of his 
engine; he could feel nothing except the grip 
of the joy-stick, numbly, through his thick 
gloves. He kept the "Osca" flying level by 
sheer sense of feel, and at times had all he 
could do to fight back a wave of panic which 



306 FRONT LINES 

rushed on him with a belief that the machine 
was side-slipping or falling into a spin that 
would bring him crashing to earth. 

When the snow cleared again and he was 
able to see his lighted instruments he made 
haste to brush them clear of snow and peer 
anxiously at them. He found he was a good 
thousand feet up and started at once to lift 
a bit higher for safety's sake. By the com- 
pass he was still flying homeward, and by the 
time — the time — he stared hard at his clock 
. . . and found it was stopped. But the pe- 
trol in his main tank was almost run out, and 
according to that he ought to be well over the 
British lines — if he had kept anything like a 
straight course. He held a brief and shouted 
conversation with his observer. * ' Don 't know 
where I am. Lost. Think we're over our 
lines." 

"Shoot a light, eh?" answered the ob- 
server, "and try 'n' land. I'm frozen stiff.' ' 

They both peered anxiously out round as 
their Verey light shot out and floated down; 
but they could see no sign of a flare or an 
answering light. They fired another signal, 



DOWN IN HUNLAND 307 

and still had no reply; and then, "I'm going 
down," yelled the pilot, shutting off his en- 
gine and letting the machine glide down in a 
slow sweeping circle. He could see nothing 
of the ground when the altimeter showed 500 
feet, nor at 300, nor at 200, so opened the 
throttle and picked up speed again. ' ' Shove 
her down, ' ' yelled the observer. ' ' More snow 
coming. ' ' 

Another Verey light, shot straight down 
overboard, showed a glimpse of a grass field, 
and Reddie swung gently round, and slid 
downward again. At the same time he fired 
a landing light fixed out under his lower wing- 
tip in readiness for just such an occasion as 
this, and by its glowing vivid white light 
made a fairly good landing on rough grass 
land. He shut the engine off at once, because 
he had no idea how near he was to the edge 
of the field or what obstacles they might 
bump if they taxied far, and the machine 
came quickly to rest. The two men sat still 
for a minute breathing a sigh of thankfulness 
that they were safe to ground, then turned 
and looked at each other in the dying light 



308 FRONT LINES 

of the flare. Stiffly they stood up, climbed 
clumsily out of their places, and down on to 
the wet ground. Another flurry of snow was 
falling, but now that they were at rest the 
snow was floating and drifting gently down 
instead of beating in their faces with hurri- 
cane force as it did when they were flying. 

Reddie flapped his arms across his chest 
and stamped his numbed feet. Walk Jones 
pulled his gloves off and breathed on his stiff 
fingers. "Pm fair froze," he mumbled. 
4 'Wonder where we are, and how far from the 
'drome ? ' ' 

"Lord knows," returned Reddie. "I don't 
know even where the line is — ahead or astern, 
right hand or left." 

"Snow's clearing again," said Jones. 
"Perhaps we'll get a bearing then, and I'll 
go 'n' hunt for a camp or a cottage, or any- 
one that'll give us a hot drink." 

* ' Wait a bit, ' ' said Reddie. ' ' Stand where 
you are and let 's give a yell. Some sentry or 
someone's bound to hear us. Snow's stop- 
ping all right; but, Great Scott! isn't it 
dark." 



DOWN IN HUNLAND 309 

Presently they lifted their voices and yelled 
an "Ahoy" together at the pitch of their 
lungs. There was no answer, and after a 
pause they yelled again, still without audible 
result. 

1 ' Oh, curse ! ' ' said Jones, shivering. * ' I 'm 
not going to hang about here yelping like a 
lost dog. And we might hunt an hour for a 
cottage. I'm going to get aboard again and 
loose off a few rounds from my machine-gun 
into the ground. That will stir somebody up 
and bring 'em along. ' ' 

"There's the line," said Eeddie suddenly. 
"Look!" and he pointed to where a faint 
glow rose and fell, lit and faded, along the 
horizon. "And the guns," he added, as they 
saw a sheet of light jump somewhere in the 
distance and heard the bump of the report. 
Other gun-flashes flickered and beat across 
the dark sky. "Funny," said Reddie; "I'd 
have sworn I turned round as we came down, 
and I thought the lines were dead the other 
way. ' ' 

The observer was fumbling about to get his 
foot in the step. "I thought they were way 



310 FRONT LINES 

out to the right," he said. "But I don't care 
a curse where they are. I want a camp or a 
French cottage with coffee on the stove. I'll 
see if I can't shoot somebody awake." 

"Try one more shout first," said Reddie, 
and they shouted together again. 

"Got 'im," said Reddie joyfully, as a faint 
hail came in response, and Jones took his foot 
off the step and began to fumble under his 
coat for a torch. "Here!" yelled Reddie. 
' ' This way ! Here ! ' ' 

They heard the answering shouts draw 
nearer, and then, just as Jones found his 
torch and was pulling it out from under his 
coat, Reddie clutched at his arm. "What — 

what was it " he gasped. "Did you hear 

what they called?" 

"No, couldn't understand," said Jones in 
some surprise at the other's agitation. 
"They're French, I suppose; farm people, 
most like." 

"It was German," said Reddie hurriedly. 
"There again, hear that? We've dropped m 
Himland." 

" Hu-Hunland ! " stammered Jones; then 



DOWN IN HUNLAND 311 

desperately, "It can't be. You sure it isn't 
French — Flemish, perhaps ! ' ' 

"Flemish — here," said Reddie, dismissing 
the idea, as Jones admitted he might well do, 
so far south in the line. ' ' I know little enough 
German, but I know French well enough ; and 
that's not French. "We're done in, Walk." 

"Couldn't we bolt for it," said Walk, look- 
ing hurriedly round. "It's dark, and we 
know where the lines are." 

"What hope of getting through them?" 
said Reddie, speaking in quick whispers. 
"But we've got a better way. We'll make a 
try. Here, quickly, and quiet as you can — 
get to the prop and swing it when I'm ready. 
We'll chance a dash for it." 

Both knew the chances against them, knew 
that in front of the machine might lie a ditch, 
a tree, a hedge, a score of things that would 
trip them as they taxied to get speed to rise ; 
they knew too that the Germans were coming 
closer every moment, that they might be on 
them before they could get the engine started, 
that they would probably start shooting at 
the first sound of her start. All these things 



312 FRONT LINES 

and a dozen others raced through their minds 
in an instant; but neither hesitated, both 
moved promptly and swiftly. Reddie clam- 
bered up and into his seat; Walk Jones 
jumped to the propeller, and began to wind 
it backwards to "suck in" the petrol to the 
cylinders. "When she starts, jump to the 
wing-tip and try 'n' swing her round," called 
Reddie in quick low tones. "It'll check her 
way. Then you must jump for it, and hang 
on and climb in as we go. Yell when you're 
aboard. All ready now. ' ' 

A shout came out of the darkness — a shout 
and an obvious question in German. "Con- 
tact," said Walk Jones, and swung the pro- 
peller his hardest. He heard the whirr of 
the starter as Reddie twirled it rapidly. 
' ' Off, ' ' called Jones as he saw the engine was 
not giving sign of life, and "Off" answered 
Reddie, cutting off the starting current. 

Another shout came, and with it this time 
what sounded like an imperative command. 
Reddie cursed his lack of knowledge of Ger- 
man. He could have held them in play a min- 
ute if "Contact," came Walk's voice 



DOWN IN HUNLAND 313 

again. ' ' Contact, ' ' he answered, and whirled 
the starter madly again. There was still no 
movement, no spark of life from the engine. 
Eeddie groaned, and Walk Jones, sweating 
despite the cold over his exertions on the pro- 
peller, wound it back again and swung it for- 
ward with all his weight. His thick leather 
coat hampered him. He tore it off and flung 
it to the ground, and tried again._ 

So they tried and failed, tried and failed, 
time and again, while all the time the shouts 
were coming louder and from different 
points, as if a party had split up and was 
searching the field. A couple of electric 
torches threw dancing patches of light on 
the ground, lifted occasionally and flashed 
round. One was coming straight towards 
them, and Eeddie with set teeth waited the 
shout of discovery he knew must come pres- 
ently, and cursed Walk's slowness at the 
"prop." 

Again on the word he whirled the starter, 
and this time ' ' Whur-r-r-rum, ' ' answered the 
engine, suddenly leaping to life; "Whur-r-r- 
ROO-00-00-OOM-^fr-r-r-umph, ,, as Eeddie 



314 FRONT LINES 

eased and opened the throttle. He heard a 
babel of shouts and yells, and saw the light- 
patches come dancing on the run towards 
them. A sudden recollection of the only two 
German words he knew came to him. "Ja 
wohl," he yelled at the pitch of his voice, 
"Ja wohl"; then in lower hurried tones, 
" Swing her, Walk; quick, swing her," and 
opened the engine out again. The running 
lights stopped for a minute at his yell, and 
Walk Jones jumped to the wing-tip, shouted 
' ' Eight ! ' ' and hung on while Eeddie started 
to taxi the machine forward. His weight 
and leverage brought her lumbering round, 
the roar of engine and propeller rising and 
sinking as Reddie manipulated the throttle, 
and Reddie yelling his "Ja wohl," every 
time the noise died down. 

''Get in, Walk; get aboard," he shouted, 
when the nose was round and pointing back 
over the short stretch they had taxied on 
landing, and which he therefore knew was 
clear running for at least a start. He heard 
another order screamed in German, and next 
instant the hang of a rifle, not more appar- 



DOWN IN HUNLAND 315 

ently than a score of yards away. He kept 
the machine lumbering forward, restraining 
himself from opening his engine out, wait- 
ing in an agony of apprehension for Walk's 
shout. He felt the machine lurch and sway, 
and the kicking scramble his observer made 
to board her, heard next instant his yelling 
"Bight-oh!" and opened the throttle full as 
another couple of rifles bang-banged. 

The rifles had little terror either for him 
or the observer, because both knew there were 
bigger and deadlier risks to run in the next 
few seconds. There were still desperately 
long odds against their attempt succeeding. 
In the routine method of starting a machine, 
chocks are placed in front of the wheels and 
the engine is given a short full-power run 
and a longer easier one to warm the engine 
and be sure all is well; then the chocks are 
pulled away and she rolls off, gathering speed 
as she goes, until she has enough for her 
pilot to lift her into the air. Here, their en- 
gine was stone cold, they knew nothing of 
what lay in front of them, might crash into 
something before they left the ground, might 



316 FRONT LINES 

rise, and even then catch some house or tree- 
top, and travelling at the speed they would 
by then have attained — well, the Lord help 
them! 

Reddie had to chance everything, and yet 
throw away no shadow of a chance. He 
opened the throttle wide, felt the machine 
gather speed, bumping and jolting horribly 
over the rough field, tried to peer down at 
the ground to see how fast they moved, could 
see nothing, utterly black nothing, almost 
panicked for one heart-stilling instant as he 
looked ahead again and thought he saw the 
blacker shadow of something solid in front of 
him, clenched his teeth and held straight on 
until he felt by the rush of wind on his face 
he had way enough, and pulled the joy-stick 
in to him. With a sigh of relief he felt the 
jolting change to a smooth swift rush, held 
his breath, and with a pull on the stick 
zoomed her up, levelled her out again (should 
clear anything but a tall tree now), zoomed 
her up again. He felt a hand thumping on 
his shoulder, heard Walk's wild exultant 
yell — ' ' 'Ra-a-ay ! ' ' and, still lifting her stead- 



DOWN IN HUNLAND 317 

ily, swung his machine's nose for the jump- 
ing lights that marked the trenches. 

They landed safe on their own 'drome 
ground half an hour after. The officer whose 
duty it was for the night to look after the 
landing-ground and light the flares in an- 
swer to the returning pilots' signals, walked 
over to them as they came to rest. 

"Hullo, you two," he said. "Where th' 
blazes you been till this time? We'd just 
about put you down as missing." 

Reddie and Walk had stood up in their 
cock-pits and, without a spoken word, were 
solemnly shaking hands. 

Reddie looked overboard at the officer on 
the ground. "You may believe it, Johnny, 
or you may not," he said, "but we've been 
down into Hunland." 

"Down into hell!" said Johnny. "Quit 
jokin'. What kept you so late?" 

"You've said it, Johnny," said Reddie 
soberly. "Down into hell — and out again." 

They shook hands again, solemnly. 



xvni 

THE FINAL OBJECTIVE 

It was all apt to be desperately confusing — 
the smoke, the shapeless shell-cratered 
ground, the deafening unceasing tempest of 
noise — but out of all this confusion and the 
turmoil of their attack there were one or two 
things that remained clear in the mind of 
Corporal ; and after all they were the things 
that counted. One was that he was in charge 
for the moment of the remains of the com- 
pany, that when their last officer was knocked 
out he, Corporal Ackroyd, had taken the of- 
ficer's wrist watch and brief instructions to 
' ' Carry on — you know what to do ' ' ; and the 
other that they had, just before the officer 
was casualtied, reached the " pink-line objec- 
tive." 

Without going too closely into the detailed 
methods of the attack — the normal methods 

318 



THE FINAL OBJECTIVE 319 

of this particular period — it is enough to say 
that three objective lines had been marked 
up on the maps of the ground to be taken, a 
pink, a purple, and a "final objective" blue- 
black line. Between the moment of occupy- 
ing the pink line and the move to attack the 
purple there were some twelve minutes al- 
lowed to bring supports into position, to pour 
further destructive artillery fire on the next 
objective, and so on. Corporal Ackroyd, in 
common with the rest of the battalion, had 
been very fully instructed in the map posi- 
tion, and rehearsed over carefully-measured- 
out ground in practice attack, and knew fairly 
well the time-table laid down. Before the 
officer was carried back by the bearers he 
gave one or two further simple guiding rules. 
"Send back a runner to report. If nobody 
comes up to take over in ten minutes, push 
on to the purple line. It's the sunk road; 
you can't mistake it. Keep close on the bar- 
rage, and you can't go wrong"; and finally, 
"Take my watch; it's synchronised time." 

Ackroyd sent back his runner, and was 
moving to a position where he could best 



320 FRONT LINES 

keep control of the remains of the company, 
when there came an interruption. 

"Some blighter out there flappin' a white 
flag, Corporal," reported a look-out, and 
pointed to where an arm and hand waved 
from a shell-hole a hundred yards to their 
front. The Corporal was wary. He had 
seen too much of the "white-flag trick" to 
give himself or his men away, but at the 
same time was keenly sensible of the advan- 
tage of getting a bunch of Germans on their 
immediate front to surrender, rather than 
have to advance in face of their fire. There 
was not much time to spare before the laid- 
down moment for the advance. 

He half rose from his cover and waved an 
answer. Promptly a figure rose from the 
shell-hole and with hands well over his head 
came running and stumbling over the rough 
ground towards him. Three-quarter way 
over he dropped into another shell-hole, and 
from there waved again. At another reas- 
suring wave from Ackroyd he rose, ran in 
and flung himself down into the shell-hole 
where the Corporal waited. The Corporal 



THE FINAL OBJECTIVE 321 

met him with his bayoneted rifle at the ready 
and his finger on the trigger, and the Ger- 
man rose to his knees shooting both hands 
up into the air with a quick "Kamerad." 

"Right-oh," said Ackroyd. "But where 
is your chums f Ain 't any more coming ? ' ' 

The German answered in guttural but clear 
enough English, "Mine comrades sended me, 
wherefore — because I speak English. They 
wish to kamerad, to become prisoner if you 
promise behave them well. You no shoot if 
they come." 

1 ' Right, ' ' said Ackroyd with another glance 
at his watch. "But you'll 'ave to 'urry 
them up. We're goin' to advance in about 
seven minutes, and I'll promise nothin' after 
that. Signal 'em in quick." 

"If I to them wave they will come," an- 
swered the German. "But mine officer come 
first and make proper kamerad." 

"He'll make a proper bloomin' sieve if he 
don't come quick," retorted Ackroyd. "The 
barrage is due to drop in less'n seven min- 
utes. Signal 'im along quick," he repeated 
impatiently, as he saw the other failed to un- 



322 FRONT LINES 

derstand. The German turned and made sig- 
nals, and at once another figure came run- 
ning and crouching to where they waited. 
"Mine officer," said the first German, "he 
no speak English, so I interpret." 

"Tell 'im," said Ackroyd, "the shellm' 
will begin again in five or six minutes, an' 
the line will advance. If he fetches 'is men 
in quick, they'll be all right, but I'll promise 
nothing if they're not in before then." 

He waited, fidgeting anxiously, while this 
was interpreted, and the officer returned an 
answer. 

"He say why needs you advance until all 
his men have surrender?" said the German. 

"Why?" exploded Ackroyd. "Why? Does 
'e think I'm the bloomin' Commander-in- 
Chief an' that I'm runnin' this show? Look 
'ere" — he paused a moment to find words to 
put the position clearly and quickly. He 
saw the urgency of the matter. In another 
few minutes the barrage would drop, and 
the line would begin to push on. If by then 
these Germans had not surrendered, they 
would conclude that the officer had not made 



THE FINAL OBJECTIVE 323 

terms and they would remain in cover and 
fight — which meant more casualties to their 
already unusually heavy list. If he could 
get the surrender completed before the mo- 
ment for advance, the next strip of ground 
to the " purple objective line" would be 
taken quickly, easily, and cheaply. 

"Now look 'ere," he said rapidly. "You 
must fix this quick. This show, this push, 
advance, attack, is runnin' to a set time-table. 
Comprenny? At quarter-past — see, quarter- 
past" — and he thrust out the watch marking 
eleven minutes past — ' ' the barrage, the shell- 
in', begins, an' we start on for the next ob- 
jective " 

"Start what?" interjected the interpreter. 

"Objective," yelled Ackroyd angrily. 
"Don't you know what a blazing objective 
isf The sunk road is our nex' objective line. 
D'you know the sunk road?" 

"Ja, ja, I knows the road," agreed the 
German. Then the officer interrupted, and 
the interpreter turned to explain matters to 
him. "I cannot it explain this objective," 
he said. "Mine officer what is it asks!" 



324 FRONT LINES 

Ackroyd swore lustily and full-bloodedly, 
but bit short bis oaths. There was no time for 
spare language now. ' ' See here, tell 'im this 
quick. A objective is the line we're told to 
take, an' goes an' takes. The Commander- 
in-Chief, 'Aig hisself, says where the objec- 
tive is, an' he marks up a line on the map 
to show where we goes to an' where we stops. 
There's a final objective where we finishes 
each push. D 'you savvy that ! Every bit o ' 
the move is made at the time laid down in at- 
tack orders. You can't alter that, an' I can't, 
nor nobody else can't. Old 'Aig 'e just draws 
'is blue-black line on the map and ses, 
'There's your final objective'; an' we just 
goes an' takes it. Now 'ave you got all that?" 

The two Germans spoke rapidly for a mo- 
ment, but the Corporal interrupted as he 
noted the rising sound of the gun-fire and 
the rapidly-increasing rush of our shells over- 
head. "Here, 'miff o' this!" he shouted. 
"There's no time — there's the barrage drop- 
pin' again. Call your men in if your goin' 
to ; or push off back an ' we '11 go 'n fetch 'em 
ourselves. You must get back the both o' 



THE FINAL OBJECTIVE 325 

you. We're movin' on." And he made a 
significant motion with the bayonet. 

As they rose crouching the roar of gun-fire 
rose to a pitch of greater and more savage 
intensity; above their heads rushed and 
shrieked a whirlwind of passing shells; out 
over the open beyond them the puffing shell- 
bursts steadied down to a shifting rolling wall 
of smoke. And out of this smoke wall there 
came running, first in ones and twos, and 
then in droves, a crowd of grey-clad figures, 
all with hands well over their heads, some 
with jerking and waving dirty white rags. 

At the same moment supports came strug- 
gling in to our line, and the Corporal made 
haste to hand over to their officer. The pris- 
oners were being hastily collected for re- 
moval to the rear, and our line rising to 
advance, when the interpreter caught at the 
Corporal. "Mine officer he say," he shouted, 
"where is it this fine ol' objective?" 

The Corporal was in rather happy mood 
over the surrender and the prospect of ad- 
vancing without opposition. "Where is it?" 
he retorted. "Like 'is bloomin' cheek askin'. 



326 FRONT LINES 

You tell 'im that 'is final objective is Doning- 
ton 'All — an' I wish ours was 'alf as pleasant. 
Ours ain't far this time, but we're off now 
to take it accordin' to attack orders an' time- 
table, like we always does. An' we'll do it 
just the same fashion — 'cos 'e knows us an' 
we knows 'im, an' knows 'e don't ask wot 
we can't do — when the day comes that good 
old 'Aig draws 'is blue-black line beyond its 
back doors an' tells us the final objective is 
Berlin.' ' 



XIX 

ARTILLERY PREPARATION 

It was the sixth day of the ' ' artillery prepara- 
tion" for the attack. During the past six 
days the dispatches on both sides had re- 
marked vaguely that there was " artillery 
activity," or "intense fire," or "occasional 
increase to drum fire." These phrases may 
not convey much to the average dispatch 
reader, and indeed it is only the Gunners, and 
especially the Field Batteries in the front 
gun-line, who understand their meaning to 
the full. 

They had here no picked "battery posi- 
tions," because they had been pushed up on 
to captured ground which they themselves 
in a previous attack had helped churn to a 
muddy shell-wrecked wilderness, had blasted 
bare of any semblance of cover or protection. 
The batteries were simply planted down in a 
long line in the open, or at best had the guns 

327 



328 FRONT LINES 

sunk a foot or two in shallow pits made by 
spading out the connecting rims of a group 
of shell-holes. The gunners, whether serving 
at the guns or taking their turn of rest, were 
just as open and exposed as the guns. The 
gun shields gave a little protection from for- 
ward fire of bullets, shrapnel, or splinters, 
but none from the downward, side, or back- 
ward blast of high-explosive shells. 

There was no cover or protection for guns 
or men simply because there had been no 
time or men to spare for ' ' digging in. ' ' The 
field guns had been pushed up to their pres- 
ent position just as quickly as the soft ground 
would allow after the last advance, and since 
then had been kept going night and day, 
bringing up and stacking piles of shells and 
still keeping up a heavy fire. The return fire 
from the Germans was spasmodic, and not to 
be compared in volume to ours, and yet 
against ranks and rows of guns in the bare 
open it could not fail to be damaging, and a 
good few of the batteries lost guns smashed 
and many men and officers killed and 
wounded. 



ARTILLERY PREPARATION 329 

But the guns, and as far as possible the 
men, were replaced, and the weight of fire 
kept up. The men worked in shifts, half of 
them keeping the guns going while the others 
ate and rested, and slept the sleep of utter 
exhaustion in shell-holes near the guns, which 
continued to bang in running bursts of "bat- 
tery fire," or crash out in ear-splitting and 
ground-shaking four-gun salvos within a 
dozen or two yards of the sleepers' heads. 
The sheer physical labour was cruelly ex- 
hausting — the carrying and handling of the 
shells, the effort to improvise sandbag and 
broken timber "platforms" under the gun 
wheels to keep them from sinking in the soft 
ground, even the mere walking or moving 
about ankle deep in the sea of sticky mud 
that surrounded the guns and clung in heavy 
clogging lumps to feet and legs. But the 
mental strain must have been even worse in 
the past six days and nights of constant 
heavy firing, and of suffering under fire. 

Now on this, the sixth and last day of the 
preparation, the rate of fire along the whole 
line was worked up to an appalling pitch of 



330 FRONT LINES 

violence. The line of the advanced field posi- 
tions ran in a narrow and irregular belt, at 
few points more than a couple of thousand 
yards from the enemy line ; the batteries were 
so closely placed that the left flank gun of 
one was bare yards from the right flank gun 
of the next, and in some groups were ranged 
in double and triple tiers. Up and down this 
line for miles the guns poured out shells as 
hard as they could go. Every now and again 
the enemy artillery would attempt a reply, 
and a squall of shells would shriek and whistle 
and crash down on some part or other of our 
guns' line, catehing a few men here, killing 
a handful there, smashing or overturning a 
gun elsewhere — but never stopping or even 
slacking the tornado of fire poured out by the 
British line. 

Each battery had a set rate of fire to main- 
tain, a fixed number of rounds to place on 
detailed targets ; and badly or lightly mauled 
or untouched, as might be, each one per- 
formed its appointed task. In any battery 
which had lost many officers and men only a 
constant tremendous effort kept the guns 



ARTILLERY PREPARATION 331 

going. The men relieved from their turn at 
the guns crawled to the craters, where they 
had slung a ground sheet or two for shelter 
from the rain, or had scooped a shallow niche 
in the side, ate their bully and biscuit, 
stretched their cramped muscles, crept into 
their wet lairs, wrapped themselves in wet 
blankets or coats, curled up and slept them- 
selves into a fresh set of cramps. They were 
lucky if they had their spell off in undisturbed 
sleep ; most times they were turned out, once, 
twice, or thrice, to help unload the pack mules 
which brought up fresh supplies of shells, and 
man-handle the rounds up from the nearest 
points the mules could approach over the 
welter of muddy ground so pitted and cra- 
tered that even a mule could not pass over it. 
When their relief finished they crawled out 
again and took their places on the guns, and 
carried on. By nightfall every man of them 
was stiff with tiredness, deafened and numb 
with the noise and shock of the piece's jar- 
ring recoil, weary-eyed and mind-sick with 
the unceasing twiddling and adjusting of tiny 
marks to minute scratches and strokes on 



332 FRONT LINES 

shell fuses, sights, and range-drums. The 
deepening dusk was hardly noticed, because 
the running bursts of flame and light kept 
the dusk at bay. And dark night brought no 
rest, no slackening of the fierce rate of fire, 
or the labour that maintained it. 

The whole gun-line came to be revealed only 
as a quivering belt of living fire. As a gun 
fired there flamed out in front of the battery 
a blinding sheet of light that threw up every 
detail of men and guns and patch of wet 
ground in glaring hot light or hard black 
silhouette. On the instant, the light vanished 
and darkness clapped down on the tired eyes, 
to lift and leap again on the following instant 
from the next gun's spurt of vivid sheeting 
flame. For solid miles the whole line throbbed 
and pulsed in the same leaping and vanishing 
gusts of fire and light ; and from either side, 
from front, and rear, and overhead, came the 
long and unbroken roaring and crashing and 
banging and bellowing of the guns' reports, 
the passing and the burst of the shells. 

So it went on all night, and so it went on 
into the grey hours of the dawn. As the 



ARTILLERY PREPARATION 333 

"zero hour" fixed for the attack approached, 
the rate of fire worked up and up to a point 
that appeared to be mere blind ravening fury. 
But there was nothing blind about it. For all 
the speed of the work each gun was accu- 
rately laid for every round, each fuse was set 
to its proper tiny mark, each shell roared 
down on its appointed target. The guns grew 
hot to the touch, the breeches so hot that oil 
sluiced into them at intervals hissed and 
bubbled and smoked like fat in a frying pan, 
as it touched the metal, 

One battery ceased fire for a few minutes 
to allow some infantry supports to pass 
through the line and clear of the blast of the 
guns' fire, and the gunners took the respite 
thankfully, and listened to the shaking 
thunder of the other guns, the rumble and 
wail and roar of the shells that passed 
streaming over their heads, sounds that up 
to now had been drowned out in the nearer 
bang and crash of their own guns. 

As the infantry picked their way out be- 
tween the guns the "Number One" of the 
nearest detachment exchanged a few shouted 



334 FRONT LINES 

remarks with one of the infantry sergeants. 

"Near time to begin," said the sergeant, 
glancing at his watch. "Busy time goin' to 
be runnin' this next day or two. You'll be 
hard at it, too, I s'pose." 

"Busy time! beginning!" retorted the ar- 
tilleryman. " I 'm about fed up o ' busy times. 
This battery hasn't been out of the line or 
out of action for over three months, an' been 
more or less under fire all that time. We 
haven't stopped shootin' night or day for a 
week, and this last 24 hours we been at it full 
stretch, hammer an' tongs. Beginnin' — Good 
Lord! I'm that hoarse, I can hardly croak, 
an' every man here is deaf, dumb, and par- 
alysed. I'm gettin' to hate this job, an' I 
never want to hear another gun or see another 
shell in my blanky life." 

The infantryman laughed, and hitched his 
rifle up to move. "I s'pose so," he said. 
"An' I shouldn't wonder if them Fritzes in 
the line you've been strafin' are feelin' same 
way as you about guns an' shells — only more 
so." 

"That's so," agreed the Number One, and 



ARTILLERY PREPARATION 335 

turned to the fuse-setters, urging them 
hoarsely to get a stack of rounds ready for 
the barrage. "We're just goin' to begin," 
he said, "an' if this blanky gun don't hump 
herself in the next hour or two .-. ." 



XX 

STRETCHER-BEARERS 

Lieutenant Drew was wounded within four 
or five hundred yards of the line from which 
his battalion started to attack. He caught 
three bullets in as many seconds — one in the 
arm, one in the shoulder, and one in the side 
— and went down under them as if he had 
been pole-axed. The shock stunned him for 
a little, and he came to hazily to find a couple 
of the battalion stretcher-bearers trying to 
lift him from the soft mud in which he was 
half sunk. 

Drew was rather annoyed with them for 
wanting to disturb him. He was quite com- 
fortable, he told them, and all he wanted was 
to be left alone there. The bearers refused 
to listen to this, and insisted in the first place 
in slicing away some of his clothing — which 
still further annoyed Drew because the 
weather was too cold to dispense with clothes 

336 



STRETCHER-BEARERS 337 

— and putting some sort of first field dress- 
ing on the wounds. 

"D'you think he can walk, Bill?" one 
asked the other. "No," said Bill. "I fancy 
he's got one packet through the lung, an' if 
he walks he '11 wash out. It 's a carryin ' job. " 

' ' Come on, then, ' ' said the first. ' ' Sooner 
we start the sooner we're there." 

Quite disregarding Drew's confused 
grumbles, they lifted and laid him on a 
stretcher and started to carry him back to 
the aid post. 

If that last sentence conveys to you any 
picture of two men lifting a stretcher nicely 
and smoothly and walking off at a gentle and 
even walk, you must alter the picture in all its 
details. The ground where the lieutenant had 
fallen, the ground for many acres round him, 
was a half -liquefied mass of mud churned up 
into lumps and hummocks pitted and cratered 
with shel 1 holes intersected with rivulets and 
pools of water. When Drew was lifted on to 
the stretcher, it sank until the mud oozed 
out and up from either side and began to 
slop in over the edges. When the bearers had 



338 FRONT LINES 

lifted him on, they moved each to his own 
end, and they moved one step at a time, 
floundering and splashing and dragging one 
foot clear after the other. When they took 
hold of the stretcher ends and lifted, both 
staggered to keep their balance on the slip- 
pery foothold ; and to move forward each had 
to steady himself on one foot, wrench the 
other up out of the mud, plunge it forward 
and into the mud again, grope a minute for 
secure footing, balance, and proceed to repeat 
the performance with the other foot. The 
stretcher lurched and jolted and swayed side 
to side, backward and forward. The move- 
ment at first gave Drew severe stabs of pain, 
but after a little the pain dulled down into a 
steady throbbing ache. 

The bearers had some 400 or 500 yards to 
go over the ground covered by the advance. 
After this they would find certain sketchy 
forms of duck-board walks — if the German 
shells had not wiped them out — and, farther 
back, still better and easier methods of 
progress to the aid post. But first there was 
this shell-ploughed wilderness to cross. Drew 



STRETCHER-BEARERS 339 

remembered vaguely what a struggle it had 
been to him to advance that distance on his 
own feet, and carrying nothing but his own 
weight and his equipment. It was little won- 
der the bearers found the same journey a 
desperate effort with his weight sagging and 
jolting between them and pressing them down 
in the mud. 

In the first five yards the leading bearer 
slipped, failed to recover his balance, and 
fell, letting his end down with a jolt and a 
splash. He rose smothered in a fresh coat of 
wet mud, full of mingled curses on the mud 
and apologies to the wounded man. Drew 
slid off into a half-faint. He woke again 
slowly, as the bearers worked through a par- 
ticularly soft patch. The mud was nearly 
thigh deep, and they were forced to take a 
step forward, half -lift, half -drag the stretcher 
on, lay it down while they struggled on 
another foot or two, turn and haul their load 
after them. It took them a full hour to move 
a fair 60 paces. 

The work was not performed, either, with- 
out distractions other than the mud and its 



340 FRONT LINES 

circumventing, and the trouble of picking the 
best course. An attack was in full progress, 
and streams of shells were screaming and 
howling overhead, with odd ones hurtling 
down and bursting on the ground they were 
traversing, flinging up gigantic geysers of 
spouting mud, clods of earth, and black 
smoke, erupting a whirlwind of shrieking 
splinters and fragments. Several times the 
bearers laid the stretcher down and crouched 
low in the mud from the warning roar of an 
approaching shell, waited the muffled crash 
of its burst, the passing of the flying frag- 
ments. From the nearer explosions a shower 
of dirt and clods rained down about them, 
splashing and thudding on the wet ground; 
from the farther ones an occasional piece of 
metal would drop whistling or droning 
angrily and ' ' whutt ' ' into the mud. Then the 
bearers lifted their burden and resumed their 
struggling advance. Fortunately the waves 
of attacking infantry had passed beyond 
them, and most of the German guns were 
busy flogging the front lines and trying to 
hold or destroy them; but there were still 



STRETCHER-BEARERS 341 

shells enough being flung back on the ground 
they had to cover to make matters unpleas- 
antly risky. To add to the risk there was a 
constant whistle and whine of passing bullets, 
and every now and then a regular shower of 
them whipping and smacking into the mud 
about them, bullets not aimed at them, but 
probably just the chance showers aimed a 
little too high to catch the advancing attack, 
passing over and coming to earth a few hun- 
dred yards back. 

The little party was not alone, although the 
ground was strangely empty and deserted to 
what it had been when the attack went over. 
There were odd wounded men, walking 
wounded struggling back alone, others more 
seriously hurt toiling through the mud with 
the assistance of a supporting arm, others 
lying waiting their turn to be carried in, 
placed for the time being in such cover as 
could be found, the cover usually of a deep 
shell-crater with soft, wet sides, and a deep 
pool at the bottom. There were odd bunches 
of men moving up, men carrying bombs, or 
ammunition, or supplies of some sort for the 



342 FRONT LINES 

firing line, all ploughing slowly and heavily 
through the sticky mud. 

Drew lost all count of time. He seemed to 
have been on that stretcher, to have been 
swaying and swinging, bumping down and 
heaving up, for half a life-time — no, more, 
for all his life, because he had no thought for, 
no interest in anything that had happened in 
the world before this stretcher period, still 
less any interest in what might happen after 
it ended — if ever it did end. Several times 
he sank into stupor or semi-unconsciousness, 
through which he was still dimly sensible 
only of the motions of the stretcher, without 
any connected thought as to what they meant 
or how they were caused. Once he awoke 
from this state to find himself laid on the 
ground, one of his bearers lying in a huddled 
heap, the other stooping over him, lifting 
and hauling at him. Everything faded out 
again, and in the next conscious period he 
was moving on jerkily once more, this time 
with two men in the lead with a stretcher- 
arm apiece, and one man at the rear end. His 



STRETCHER-BEARERS 343 

first stretcher-bearer they left there, flat and 
still, sinking gradually in the soft ooze. 

Again everything faded, and this time he 
only recovered as he was being lifted out of 
the stretcher and packed on a flat sideless 
truck affair with four upright corner posts. 
Somewhere near, a battery of field guns was 
banging out a running series of ear-splitting 
reports — and it was raining softly again — 
and he was sitting instead of lying. He 
groped painfully for understanding of it all. 

" Where am I?" he asked faintly. 

"You're all right now, sir," someone an- 
swered him. "You'll have to sit up a bit, 
'cos we've a lot o' men an' not much room. 
But you're on the light railway, an' the 
truck '11 run you the half-mile to the Post in 
a matter o' minutes." 

"What time is it?" asked Drew. "How's 
the show going!" 

"It's near two o'clock, sir. An' we hear 
all the objectives is taken." 

"Near two," said Drew, and as the truck 
moved off, "Near two," he kept repeating 
and struggling to understand what had hap- 



344 FRONT LINES 

pened to time — had started at six . . . and 
it was "near two" . . . "near two" . . . 
two o'clock, that was. He couldn't piece it 
together, and he gave it np at last and de- 
voted himself to fitting words and music to 
the rhythm of the grinding, murmuring truck 
wheels. Six o'clock . . . two o'clock. 

It was little wonder he was puzzled. The 
attack had started at six. But it had taken 
the stretcher-bearers five hours to carry him 
some 400 yards. 



XXI 

THE CONQUEROBS 

The public room (which in England would 
be the Public Bar) of the "Cheval Blanc" 
estaminet, or "Chevvle Blank" as its pres- 
ent-day customers know it, had filled very 
early in the evening. Those members of the 
Labour Company who packed the main room 
had just returned to the blessings of compar- 
ative peace after a very unpleasant spell in 
the line which had culminated in a last few 
days — and the very last day especially — on a 
particularly nasty "job o' work." Making a 
corduroy road of planks across an apparently 
bottomless pit of mud in a pouring rain and 
biting cold wind cannot be pleasant work at 
any time. When you stir in to the dish of 
trouble a succession of five-point-nine high- 
explosive shells howling up out of the rain 
and crashing thunderously down on or about 

the taped-out line of road, it is about as near 
345 



346 FRONT LINES 

the limit of unpleasantness as a Labour 
Company cares to come. The job was rushed, 
five-nines being a more drastic driver than 
the hardest hustling foreman, but the German 
gunners evidently had the old road nicely 
ranged and had correctly estimated the chance 
of its being reconstructed, with the result that 
their shells pounded down with a horrible 
persistency which might have stopped any- 
thing short of the persistency of the Com- 
pany and the urgency of the road being put 
through. The men at work there, stripped to 
open-throated and bare-armed shirts, and yet 
running rivers of sweat for all their strip- 
ping, drove the work at top speed on this last 
day in a frantic endeavour to complete before 
dark. They knew nothing of the tactical 
situation, nothing of what it might mean to 
the success or failure of "the Push" if the 
road were not ready to carry the guns and 
ammunition waggons by that nightfall, knew 
only that "Roarin' Bill, The Terrible Turk," 
had pledged the Company to finish that night, 
and that "Roarin' Bill" must not be let down. 
It must be explained here that "Roarin' 



THE CONQUERORS 347 

Bill" was the Captain in command of the 
Company, and although the men perhaps 
hardly knew it themselves, or ever stopped 
to reason it out, the simple and obvious rea- 
son for their reluctance to let him down was 
merely because they knew that under no cir- 
cumstances on earth would he let them, the 
Company, down. His nick-name was a 
private jest of the Company's, since he had 
the voice and manners of a sucking dove. 
But for all that his orders, his bare word, 
or even a hint from him, went farther than 
any man's, and this in about as rough and 
tough a Company as a Captain could well 
have to handle. "Bill" had said they must 
finish before dark, walked up and down the 
plank road himself watching and directing 
the work, and never as much as looked — that 
they knew of — at the watch on his wrist to 
figure whether they 'd make out or not. " Th ' 
Terrible Turk 'as spoke; wot 'e 'as said, 'e 
blanky well 'as said," Sergeant Buck re- 
marked once as the Captain passed down the 
road, "an' all the shells as Gerry ever pitched 
ain't go in' to alter it. Come on, get at it; 



348 FRONT LINES 

that blighter's a mile over." The gang, who 
had paused a moment in their labour to 
crouch and look up as a shell roared over, 
' ' got at it, ' ' slung the log into place, and had 
the long spike nails that held the transverse 
planks to "the ribbon" or binding edge log 
half hammered home before the shell had 
burst in a cataract of mud and smoke three 
hundred yards beyond. The shells weren't 
always beyond. Man after man was sent 
hobbling, or carried groaning, back over the 
road he had helped to build ; man after man, 
until there were six in a row, was lifted to a 
patch of slightly drier mud near the roadside 
and left there — because the road needed every 
hand more than did the dead who were past 
needing anything. 

The job was hard driven at the end, and 
with all the hard driving was barely done to 
time. About 4 o'clock an artillery subaltern 
rode over the planks to where the gang 
worked at the road-end, his horse slithering 
and picking its way fearfully over the muddy 
wet planks. 

"Can't we come through yet?" he asked, 



THE CONQUERORS 349 

and the Captain himself told him no, he was 
afraid not, because it would interrupt his 
work. 

"But hang it all," said the Gunner officer, 
"there's a couple of miles of guns and wag- 
gons waiting back there at the Control. If 
they're not through before dark " 

"They won't be," said the Captain mildly, 
"not till my time to finish, and that's 5 
o'clock. You needn't look at your watch," 
he went on, "I know it 's not five yet, because 
I told my men they must finish by five — and 
they're not finished yet." He said the last 
words very quietly, but very distinctly, and 
those of the gang who heard passed it round 
the rest as an excellent jest which had com- 
pleted the " 'tillery bloke's" discomfiture. 
But the Captain's jest had a double edge. 
"Start along at five," he had called to the 
retiring Gunner, "and she'll be ready for you. 
This Company puts its work through on time, 
always." And the Company did, cramming a 
good two hours' work into the bare one to 
make good the boast; picking and spading 
tremendously at the shell-torn earth to level 



350 FRONT LINES 

a way for the planks, filling in deep and shal- 
low holes, carrying or dragging or rolling 
double burdens of logs and planks, flinging 
them into place, spiking them together with 
a rapid fusillade of click-clanking hammer- 
blows. They ceased to take cover or even to 
stop and crouch from the warning yells of 
approaching shells; they flung off the gas- 
masks, hooked at the "Alert" high on their 
chests, to give freer play to their arms ; they 
wallowed in mud and slime, and cursed and 
laughed in turn at it, and the road, and the 
job, and the Army, and the war. But they 
finished to time, and actually at 5 o 'clock they 
drove the last spikes while the first teams 
were scrabbling over the last dozen loose 
planks. 

Then the Company wearily gathered up its 
picks and shovels and dogs and sleds, and its 
dead, and trudged back single-file along the 
edge of the road up which the streaming 
traffic was already pouring to plunge off the 
end and plough its way to its appointed 
places. 

And now in the "Cheval Blanc" as many 



THE CONQUERORS 351 

of the Company as could find room were 
crowded, sitting or standing contentedly in a. 
"fug" you could cut with a spade, drinking 
very weak beer and smoking very strong 
tobacco, gossiping over the past days, thank- 
ing their stars they were behind in rest for a 
spell. 

The door opened and admitted a gust of 
cold air; and the cheerful babel of voices, 
shuffling feet, and clinking glasses, died in a 
silence that spread curiously, inwards circle 
by circle from the door, as three men came 
in and the Company realised them. The 
Captain was one, and the other two were — 
amazing and unusual vision there, for all that 
it was so familiar in old days at home — nor- 
mal, decently dressed in tweeds and serge, 
cloth-capped, ordinary "civilians," obviously 
British, and of working class. 

The Captain halted and waved them for- 
ward. "These two gentlemen," he said to 
the Company, "are — ah — on a tour of the 
Front. They will — ah — introduce themselves 
to you. Corporal, please see them back to 



352 FRONT LINES 

my Mess when they are ready to come," and 
he went out. 

The two new-comers were slightly ill at 
ease and felt a little out of place, although 
they tried hard to carry it off, and nodded to 
the nearest men and dropped a "How goes 
it?" and "Hullo, mates" here and there as 
they moved slowly through the throng that 
opened to admit them. Then one of them 
laughed, still with a slightly embarrassed air, 
and squared his shoulders, and spoke up loud 
enough for the room to hear. 

The room heard — in a disconcerting silence 
— while he explained that they were two of a 
"deputation" of working men brought out to 
"see the conditions" at the Front, and go 
back and tell their mates in the shops what 
they saw. 

"It's a pity," said the Corporal gently 
when he finished, "you 'adn't come to us a 
day earlier. 'Twoulda bin some condition 
you 'da seen." 

"Wot d'jer want to see!" asked another. 
"This . . . ain't front ezackly." "Listen!" 
cried another, "ain't that a shell comin' over 1 ? 



THE CONQUERORS 353 

Take cover !" And the room tittered, the 
nearest shell being a good five miles away. 

' ' Want to see everything, ' ' said the deputy. 
1 1 We 're going in the trenches to-morrow, but 
bein' here to-night we asked your Cap'n 
where we'd meet some o' the boys, an' he 
brought us here." 

"Wot trenches — wot part?" he was asked, 
and when, innocently enough, he named a part 
that for years has had the reputation of a 
Quaker Sunday School for peacefulness, a 
smile flickered round. The deputy saw the 
smile. He felt uneasy; things weren't going 
right; there wasn't the eager welcome, the 
anxious questions after labour conditions and 
so on he had expected. So he lifted his voice 
again and talked. He was a good talker, 
which perhaps was the reason he was a chosen 
deputy. But he didn't hold the room. Some 
listened, others resumed their own chat, 
others went on with the business of the 
evening, the drinking of thin beer. When he 
had finished the other man spoke, with even 
less success. There is some excuse for this. 
You cannot quite expect men who have been 



354 FRONT LINES 

working like niggers under the filthiest pos- 
sible conditions of wet and mud, weather and 
squalor, have been living and working, sleep- 
ing and eating, with sudden and violent death 
at their very elbows, to come straight out of 
their own inferno and be in any way deeply 
interested in abstract conditions of Labour 
at Home, or to be greatly sympathetic to the 
tea-and-butter shortage troubles of men who 
are earning good money, working in com- 
fortable shops, and living in their own homes. 
The men were much more interested in af- 
fairs in France. 

"Wot's the idea anyway 1 ?" asked one man. 
"Wot's the good o' this tour business?" 

''We've come to see the facks," said a 
deputy. ' ' See 'em for ourselves, and go back 
home to tell 'em in the shops what you chaps 
is doing." 

"Wish they'd let some of us swap places 
wi' them in the shops," was the answer. "I'd 
tell 'em something, an' they'd learn a bit 
too, doin' my job here." 

"The workers, Labour, wants to know," 
went on the deputy, ignoring this. "Some 



THE CONQUERORS 355 

says finish the war, and some says get on 
with it, and " 

"Which are you doing?" came in swift 
reply, and ' ' How many is on this deputation 
job!" 

"There's three hundred a week coming 
out," said the deputy with a touch of pride, 
"and " 

i i Three hundred ! ' ' said a loud voice at the 
back of the room. "Blimey, that's boat an' 
train room for three 'undred a week the less 
o' us to go on leaf." 

The talk drifted off amongst the men them- 
selves again, but the deputation caught 
snatches of it. "Same ol' game as oP Blank 
did . . . we'll see their names in the papers 
makin' speeches when they're home . . . 
wearin' a tin 'at an' a gas-mask an' bein' 
warned to keep their 'eads down cos this is 
the front line — at Vale-o '-tears. Oh Lord!" 
. . . "Square the Quarter-bloke an' take the 
shrap helmet home as a souvenier to hang 

over the mantel " (Here a listening 

deputy blushed faintly and hastily renounced 
a long-cherished secret idea.) "Will this 



356 FRONT LINES 

trip entitle 'em to a war medal?" "Lord 'elp 
the one of 'em I meets wearing a medal that 
they gets for a week where they're go in', an' 
that I've took years to earn, where we come 
from. ' ' 

The deputy began a long speech, worked 
himself up into a warmth befitting the sub- 
ject, begged his hearers to "hold together," 
not to forget they were workers before they 
were soldiers ("an' will be after — with a vote 
apiece," struck in a voice), and finally wound 
up with a triumphant period about ' ' Union is 
Strength" and "Labor omnia vincit — Labour 
Conquers All," which last he repeated sev- 
eral times and with emphasis. 

Then the Corporal answered him, and after 
the first sentence or two the room stilled and 
the Company held its breath to listen, break- 
ing at times into a running murmur of ap- 
plause. The Corporal spoke well. He had 
the gift ; still better he had the subject ; and, 
best of all, he had an audience that under- 
stood and could not be shocked by blunt 
truths. He told the deputation some details 
of the work they had been doing and the con 



THE CONQUERORS 357 

ditions under which it was done; what the 
shell-fire was like, and what some of the casu- 
alties were like ; the hours of their labour and 
the hours of their rest; how they had made 
their road with the shells smashing in at 
times as fast as it could be made; how a 
waggon of timber, six-horse team, and driver 
had been hit fair by a five-nine on the road, 
and how the wreckage (and nothing else that 
they could help) had been used to begin fill 
in the hole ; what their daily pay was and what 
their rations were, especially on nights when 
a shell wrecked the ration-carrying party; 
and, finally, their total of killed and wounded 
in the one day, yesterday. 

' ' Union is strength, ' ' he finished up. ' ' But 
does their union at home help our strength 
here ? What strength do we get when a strike 
wins and you get more pay — at 'ome, an' 
we're left short o' the shells or airyplanes 
that might save us gettin' shelled an' air- 
bombed in the ruddy trenches. Labour Con- 
quers All! Does it? Tell that to a five-nine 
H.E. droppin' on you. Ask Black Harry an' 



358 FRONT LINES 

Joe Hullish an' the rest o' them we buried 
yesterday, if Labour Conquers All. ' ' 

The deputation had no answer, gave up the 
argument, and presently withdrew. 

But actually, if they had seen it, and if 
Labour could see it, they were entirely right, 
and the Corporal himself unwittingly had 
proved it. Union is strength — if it be the 
union of the workshops and the Front; 
Labour does conquer all — if Labour, Back 
and Front, pull together. There was no need 
to ask the question of Black Harry and Joe 
Hullish and the rest, because they themselves 
were the answer, lying in their shallow 
graves that shook and trembled about them 
to the roar and rumble of the traffic, the guns 
and limbers and ammunition waggons pour- 
ing up the road which they had helped to 
make. They were dead; but the road was 
through. Labour had won ; they were, are, 
and — if their mates, Back and Front, so de- 
cree — will be The Conquerors. 



BOOKS l y BOYD CABLE 



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